If you’ve been waiting for Google to enter martech, your wait is over. Google Cloud has launched a collection of retail solutions ranging from store operations to merchandising to customer acquisition and retention. Google also announced retail-related partnerships with system integrators and software firms including Bluecore, Salesforce, SAP, and Tableau.
LiveRamp’s business is built on tracking consumers across platforms, so it makes sense in a fox-guarding-the-chickens sort of way for them to be in the business of preserving privacy as well. They’ve just bought Faktor, an Amsterdam-based consent management platform that will become part of their suite of privacy compliance tools.
Wrapping up an atypically cheerful sequence, major advertising organizations have launched a “Privacy for America” coalition that will lobby for surprisingly reasonable of principles to improve consumer privacy protections. You can argue that they’re only trying to forestall more stringent state legislation and if you’re really cynical you can say they’re trying to hobble Facebook, Google and other data collectors. But it’s a beautiful spring day so let’s just see it as a step in the right direction.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.