Has the pandemic led companies to prioritize customer experience technology over traditional concerns for security and cost reduction? This Harvard Business Review Analytic Services study for Apptio found that corporate managers ranked customer experience at the top of their list of strategic goals for tech spending. But don’t get too excited: an IDG survey of mostly IT managers found they (still) put cybersecurity, analytics, and business process management ahead of customer experience spending.

Few IT departments want to build their own adtech, which leaves the field open for companies like Vistar Media, a specialist in digital out of home programmatic ad buying, selling, and network management. They just raised a $30 million Series B. Funds came from outdoor ad seller Lamar Advertising, which will gain a minority stake in Vistar.

Unauthorized training data isn’t an existential threat to generative AI but it’s certainly a headache for users and developers alike.  Most developers are trying to exclude materials that creators have explicitly labeled as unauthorized and citing “fair use” as justification for copying everything else.  Getty Images has taken an opposite approach, building its gen AI tool only on materials that are explicitly licensed.  It’s possible that tracing the provenance of training data will become a standard, similar to how organic food producers trace the origins of their ingredients.