Let’s try some actual industry news today. (So crazy, it just might work). Customer Data Platform vendor Datorama has released “Genius”, an artificial intelligence-powered feature that continuously monitors data the system collects and provides marketers with actionable insights such as which audience segments are responding above average. The system watches how marketers respond so it can learn which insights they find most useful and offer similar ones in the future.

Tagove offers tools for video, voice, and text chat along with related features such as screen sharing and co-browsing. It has just added an integrated CRM to store conversation results and do other CRMish things like lead management, task creation, and outbound emails. It seems like buying a car from your windshield wiper manufacturer. Is CRM really that much of a commodity?

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.