B2B buyers are buying more online than ever, but growing pains abound. In fact, 97% of respondents to this Avionos survey said suppliers’ ecommerce tech creates a problem during the purchase process. Integration with buyers’ own systems, poor configuration and quoting technology, and inaccurate product information are top concerns.
You may not want another item about retail media but look on the bright side, Dear Reader: it’s not about social commerce. Anyway, this overview by eMarketer is pretty good, including the headline estimates that retail media ad revenue will grow 31.4% this year, total $40.8 billion and account for 16.4% of U.S. digital ad spending. But don’t get too frisky: Amazon accounts for 77% of the total.
You can download this Radiant Logic study on identity management without sharing your email address, which may be the authors’ sly comment on the value of some customer information. Sure enough, the IT leaders who answered the survey were much more likely to worry about the impact of “identity sprawl” on employee frustration (46%) than on customer service (12%). They have a point: 60% said their company has more than 21 different identities per internal user, leading to all sorts of inefficiencies and security risks.
Twilio is adding ‘contextual awareness’ to its Segment CDP, which in plainer English means data stored in Segment will be available when creating event-triggered, real-time messages. This and a redesigned journey architecture are part of Twilio’s “next generation” customer engagement platform, which also includes natural voice AI agents, voice and text analytics, and RCS and WhatsApp messaging. Twilio separately announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft to speed the adoption of conversational AI for customer engagement.