It’s Amazon’s world; the rest of us just live in it. Amazon Web Services (AWS) drove the point home this week by launching an Advertising and Marketing Technology Competency program that certifies vendors as capable of doing their jobs. Proudly participating CDPs include Acquia, ActionIQ, Adobe, Algonomy, Amperity, Blueshift, CleverTap, Cordial, Tealium, Firsthive, mParticle, Treasure Data, SAS, Segment, Zeta, and likely others that I’ve missed.
Consumers may be lukewarm about AI, but they are passionate about their apps. Cisco finds that 88% have stopped using an app due to performance issues in the past year and 76% are trying to limit the number of apps on their devices. Two-thirds (66%) now want to use only the best apps and expect an exceptional digital experience as a standard. How exceptional can be standard, I don’t know.
Every now and then, global governments humbly suggest that Big Tech companies might adjust their actions ever so slightly to avoid existential harm if it’s not too much trouble. A group of eighteen countries including the U.S. and Britain took one of those tentative steps this week by offering non-binding recommendations for building AI systems that are “secure by design”. It’s not clear whether the Tech Overlords took notice.
Salesforce is about to release Marketing Cloud Next, available to Marketing Cloud customers for an additional license (cost not yet known). It features improved access to Salesforce’s AI agents, including some that can converse with customers until it’s time to pass them to marketing or sales humans. There will also be a tighter integration with Commerce Cloud.