We might as well finish with another survey. Accenture found that companies who are “strategically scaling” artificial intelligence are getting better results than companies that just do Proof of Concept tests. The strategic scalers are also more likely to invest in data management. No explicit mention here of CDPs but you get the idea.
Here’s yet another acquisition of a recommendation engine vendor: digital experience platform Episerver has purchased Idio, which tracks individual customer behaviors and recommends best actions in real time. This follows recent acquisitions of Custora by Amperity, RichRelevance by Manthan, and Boxx.ai by Netcore.
Lest we neglect Salesforce and Microsoft: those two have expanded their relationship by moving the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Microsoft Azure. The switch will improve performance, enhance scalability, and reduce deployment times. Not that those were problems. The companies also plan to connect Salesforce Sales and Service Clouds with Microsoft Teams.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.