Ad holding giant WPP has combined 700 people in its data specialist groups at GroupM and Wunderman Thompson to create a new global company called Choreograph. The goal is to take help clients make better use of their first party data for audience insights, identity solutions, media optimization, and predictive analytics.
The U.S. federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused Amazon’s request for arbitration and allowed the case to proceed. The 2019 suit alleges that the company captured and stored the voiceprints in violation of privacy laws in eight states. Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim Alexa illegally records kids without parental consent and are seeking monetary compensation for the as well as an injunction that requires Amazon to get consent before it records minors’ interactions with Alexa.
Verizon Media and VIZIO have partnered to better exploit data from VIZIO’s 18 million smart TV for ad targeting. The deal will let Verizon supplement its own customer information with VIZIO’s Inscape data on TV viewership, for better ad targeting and measurement.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.