CDP Institute

Sticking with connected TV, Wurl Network says its 180+ streaming channels now reach more than 100 million devices across nine countries. This after just one year of operation. They delivered 1.2 billion personally targeted ads during that period.

Connected TV is delivered outside of standard cable networks, while linear TV is scheduled programming within those networks. Now that we’ve clarified that, we’ll report that AT&T’s Xandr has added a self-service tool that lets media buyers select a single audience across linear TV networks reaching 76% of U.S. households. This avoids duplicate exposures.

Many marketers are taking advantage of COVID-19 as tactfully as they can. Companies announcing free or expanded services to support home workers include Zoom (video conferencing), Microsoft (collaboration), Google (videoconferencing), Evolve IP (collaboration), StarLeaf (video conferencing), Vidyo (video conferencing) Oneclick (remote access) , Odo (remote access) and Trustifi (email encryption) Further afield, Cappasity is offering its 3-D online demo software to large retailers and, perhaps most creative, CampTek has built a bot to manage conference cancelations

Meanwhile, our considerably-less-tactful friends in the social media world are focused on near-term revenue. Alphabet-owned YouTube has announced it will allow ads to run in videos about COVID-19, reversing an earlier policy intended to help advertisers avoid unpleasant associations. They still won’t check whether the videos are distributing lies.

Back to business as usual: video analytics platform Deep North has raised a $25.7 million Series A. Deep North watches retail shoppers to understand behaviors such as traffic patterns and items purchased. Cool and not too creepy, assuming it’s all anonymous.

B2B relationship intelligence platform Affinity has purchased Toronto-based Nudge.ai, a somewhat-similar product which shut down in January. Nudge closed its doors when they still had enough money in the bank to pay off all creditors and return a bit to investors. Did I mention they’re Canadian?

Coveo, which matches content to user behaviors, has extended its system to offer relevant advice as customers are using online products. “In-Product Experience Intelligence” joins Coveo applications for e-commerce and Web site search.

Today’s secret word is “intelligence”, so we’ll finish with audience intelligence vendor DataQ.ai, which provides e-commerce marketers with automated recommendations for advertising campaigns. They just launched their latest version which lets users specify campaign goals. Pricing starts as low as $19 per month.

Next, programmatic ad audience platform Criteo has teamed with creative optimization platform Jivox to deploy integrated campaigns. Criteo recommends audiences and products to Jivox, which builds and tests ad variations, which Criteo then serves to it audiences, which it refines based on results reported by Jivox. Sweet.

We end with a Jekyll and Hyde story: ad blocking and virtual private network products from Sensor Tower have been sharing data on the users they are supposed to protect. The leaks were uncovered by BuzzFeed, which reports that many of Sensor Tower apps were removed from Android and iOS app stores for policy violations. Sensor Tower says only anonymized data was shared for analytical purposes.

Today’s theme is “odd couples”. First up: contact center software vendor Serenova is merging with video conferencing vendor Lifesize. The connection may seem tenuous but remember that Serenova was purchased in 2016 by Marlin Equity Partners, which then backed Serenova’s acquisition of Telstrat call analytics in 2017 and ProScheduler workforce scheduling in 2019. The stated goal is a “holistic unified communications portfolio”

This is not the happiest moment for the event management industry. But coronavirus too shall pass, so event marketing automation vendor Banzai has proceeded with a $7 million Series A funding.