CDP Institute

Let’s stay positive. USA TODAY is joining Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Press, and others in Facebook’s third-party fact checking program, which flags misleading content on Facebook and Instagram. Of course, there’s no reason to believe Facebook will actually block false content but we’re trying to stay positive, remember?

Here’s another half-full glass: Vox Media is working with the Google News Initiative to launch Concert Local, a centralized ad marketplace for local publishers. Google’s aggressive business tactics are a good part of the reason local publishers need help in the first place but remember: half a crumb is better than none.

It looks like consumers will be watching more TV than usual for a while. So let’s look at TV advertising news. First up: Valassis just launched Connected TV, a service that lets ad buyers use Valassis’ 120 million household identity graph to target audiences on devices, apps, and networks. Buyers can also correlate ad placements with results including foot traffic.

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.

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.

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?

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”