“Insufficient groveling” may not yet be a crime, but it does help to explain why proceedings commenced yesterday in the FTC’s lawsuit alleging Meta built an illegal monopoly through the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions. The trial has been a long time coming: the acquisitions each happened more than a decade ago and the case was filed in 2020. Mark Zuckerberg has begun testifying.
Marketing and customer data intelligence platform Validity has acquired email testing and optimization provider Litmus. Validity’s platform currently offers CRM data management as well as email address verification and deliverability services. The addition of Litmus will support end-to-end email marketing campaigns.
Speaking of monopolists, Google is unabashedly using AI Overviews to redirect users to Google search results. AI Overviews is increasing the number of links that it shares in its answers presented in summary format, but the links often go to Google search pages rather than other websites. Google says the links will appear when its systems determine they are “useful,” although they didn’t specify whether that’s useful to consumers or to Google.
When BlueConic bought experience builder platform Jebbit last July, it positioned the combination as “the industry’s first-ever Operating System for Customer Data”. In case their meaning wasn’t clear, they’ve now directly integrated Jebbit with BlueConic profiles and segmentation, enabling marketers to launch no-code quizzes, surveys and personalized guided journeys without leaving the CDP.