CDP Institute

Next we have Appier, which offers AI-based products to optimize Web site offers and advertising audiences. They just raised an $80 million Series D, bringing total funding to $162 million.

Finally, GroundTruth is using machine learning to optimize ad bids for driving visits to retail locations. GroundTruth’s core business is location-based advertising on mobile apps.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vendor Automation Anywhere has raised an impressive $290 million Series B, one year after an even more impressive $550 million Series A. The company makes it easy for non-technical users to create automated processes. They also just launched a Salesforce connector on AppExchange.

Pegasystems also does tons of RPA, although it’s focused on helping call center agents. They just released a survey finding that most call center agents expect intelligent chatbots and virtual agents to speed up interactions, although just 9% say their company has a chatbot in place. Speedy resolution was cited by 84% of agents as the most important factor in satisfying customers, compared with just 39% citing a complete customer view.

Chatbot vendor Intercom found that sales bots now outnumber customer service bots, a switch from earlier days when service bots were more common. Both types of bots speed response and save money but 87% of consumers still prefer humans for quick interactions. Fun fact: there are more than 2,000 chatbot vendors.

Here’s a buzzword bonanza: open source, privacy-safe, AI-driven, voice-based personal assistant Snips has been purchased for $37.5 million by smart-speaker company Sonos. Snips’ conversational software runs on a local device without transferring voice data to the cloud. It can work without an internet connection.

ADmantX scores just one buzzword point, for natural language processing used to analyze ad content in support of brand safety, contextual targeting, and visitor profiling. They get a half-point bonus for a weird name. But that will go away soon, since they were just bought by digital ad verification vendor integral Ad Science for a reported €16 million ($18 million).

More about money and AI: Decibel has raised a $17 million Series B, bringing total funding to $26 million. Decibel uses AI to analyze the quality of users’ digital experiences, which they summarize in a Digital Experience Score.

Marketers are struggling to identify customers in the face of increasing privacy restrictions. Experian is offering a new solution that uses signals from multiple sources to connect Mobile Ad IDs (tracking codes associated with mobile devices) to other identifiers. It’s part of their MarketingConnect identity resolution product.

Whether consumers want their mobile devices matched to other identifiers is another question. This Tealium survey found that 97% are at least somewhat concerned about protecting their privacy and 91% want tighter government regulation. On the other hand, 75% would share personal data in return for discounts or exclusive benefits.

Linking customer IDs is just the start to building a unified customer view. Marketers also struggle to connect information across different data stores. Starburst just raised a $22 million Series A for its system, which enables SQL queries against multiple data stores. It’s based the open source Presto distributed query engine.

Salesforce has introduced immodestly-titled Customer 360 Truth – which looks to be a full-fledged CDP, although the words “customer data platform” do not appear in their description. Nor does an availability date, although we understood the product was to be released at Dreamforce. Also announced: no-code customer data integration via Mulesoft, a Google Cloud connector for MuleSoft and an agreement to use Amazon Connect as Salesforce’s primary contact center offering