Hospitality marketing vendor (and CDP) Cendyn has purchased WIHP, a specialist in “metasearch”, which is the hospitality industry term for connecting hotels with price comparison websites. We don’t see too many acquisitions by CDP vendors, but, then again, CDP is just one of many features offered by Cendyn.
Also at Google Cloud Next, AI-based content creation tool Typeface announced it has collaborated with GrowthLoop (originally data extraction tool Flywheel) to create a unified marketing solution that automatically builds audience segments, generates custom content, and distributes the results across multiple channels. It’s a good example of how AI and cloud platforms enable companies outside of the traditional marketing technology space to quickly develop sophisticated products.
Visa is working with local banks and fintech companies in Kenya to launch contactless payments. Customers will be able to transact without a physical wallet or a card. Customers can use the Thales-powered service by tapping their Near-field communication (NFC) enabled smartphones at any contactless payment terminal to make in-store purchases using their banking app.
Salesforce’s Dreamforce mega-conference is next week and the company’s publicity elves are already working overtime. In the first of what are sure to be daily announcements this week, the company announced 100+ industry-specific prompts, data models, and AI capabilities across its fifteen industry clouds. It also launched an AI Use Case Library to house its industry-specific AI offerings.