CDP Institute

Adobe has announced that Marketo users will be able to access content stored in its Adobe Experience Manager digital asset manager. I wouldn’t ordinarily report such a simple integration, especially when both products are owned by the same company. But we’ve been starved for news you find interesting, Dear Reader, and you do like articles about Adobe.

You haven’t been especially interested in Demandbase, Dear Reader, but at least this announcement involves customer data. Specifically, they have announced Data Stream, which lets users access all account-specific data in Demandbase for reporting and dashboards. I guess this means that all data within Demandbase wasn’t already accessible. We are shocked.

Proxy sells a mobile phone app that broadcasts an identity signal, avoiding the need for keys, ID cards or passcodes. It’s secure in that the signal is a single-use, encrypted token that only makes sense to user-authorized devices. But all bets are off if a phone gets lost or the user just wants a few moments of privacy. Anyway, they just raised a $42 million Series B, bringing their total to just over $60 million.

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.

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?