Since we’re on the topic, event automation vendor Certain recently unveiled a real-time event data platform that makes it easier to react to attendee behavior by integrating event data into complex processes. The platform, called Signal, has integrations with marketing automation, CRM, and other systems.
Now for some good news: integration of marketing stacks has improved sharply over the past two years, according to Walker Sands’ State of Marketing Technology 2019 report. Compared with the 2017 study, companies with an integrated best of breed stack rose from 27% to 34% and those using a single vendor suite rose from 21% to 27%. Limited piecemeal and fragmented best of breed stacks fell from 42% to 17%. Just 7% reported they have no marketing technology, compared with 17% in the earlier report.
Finally, identity verification vendor Onfido has raised $50 million in new funding from Salesforce Ventures among others. Total raise is now $100 million. Onfido verifies consumer identities remotely by comparing a video selfie against a photo of a government identity document. It uses AI to ensure the document is authentic and that the person in the selfie matches the photo ID.
Is AI working for humans or are we working for AI? Let’s just note that the goal of Adobe’s new LLM Optimizer (no release date available) is helping a brand’s content appeal to LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity. More evidence that agentic traffic is gaining importance compared with traditional search.