We reported last week that nearly half of advertisers and publishers expect Google to delay cookie deprecation again. That hasn’t happened yet, but they did just announce they are rolling out First Party Sets, which loosens the rules a bit by enabling related websites to share what would otherwise look like third-party cookies for limited purposes such as shared sign-on. Hmm.
Back in March, Salesforce announced it would integrate generative AI with its CRM system. Last week, it was Slack’s turn, with lots of nice promises to do things like have Slack summarize conversations, embed AI within workflows, and query CDP data with a conversational interface. Most of it isn’t ready yet, but let’s give Salesforce credit for stating that clearly.
I vaguely recall a satire where ads were inserted at contextually relevant spots in movies, such as a cellphone ad when ET calls home. Wait, that’s the example given to explain an utterly serious announcement last week of a new ad placement option from Roku. “Roku’s artificial intelligence searches the Roku library for iconic plot moments that match a brand’s message and place their ads in real time.” So horrifying it might just work.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.