Today we’ll contemplate that most sublime of mysteries: the mind of the consumer. A carefully designed study from Intent Lab tested whether giving consumers what they wanted – that is, showing them products they are looking for – gives better results than trying to address their underlying goals. Turns out that messages related to goals are more effective.

Mobile attribution vendor AppsFlyer has introduced Incrementality, a solution that runs tests to determine the incremental impact of remarketing programs. Managing hold-out samples is tough, so that’s noteworthy in itself. But I was also intrigued by AppsFlyer’s statement that “attribution and incrementality are completely independent concepts” – the difference, apparently, being that attribution assigns full or fractional revenue “credit” to marketing touches while incrementality estimates the net revenue change resulting from a touch. Got that?

The past year has been tough for all kinds of tech investments.  This LUMA report offers an overview of martech, adtech, and content tech financial activity in public markets, private financing, and mergers and acquisitions.  To summarize a mixed picture: the bleeding has stopped but growth has not yet resumed.