YouTube is not just a video platform, of course, it’s also a powerful search engine and it has begun testing a Google AI Overviews carousel that will appear in results for selected queries. Given the threat AI Overviews is perceived to pose to click-thru traffic in Google Search results, there’s a question about whether the YouTube initiative could depress click-thrus to brand and creator videos. Right now, the feature is only visible to a sub-set of U.S. premium users.

Customer data and data management platform FirstHive has entered a strategic partnership with digital CX platform Infogain. Infogain will draw on FirstHive’s customer data-based predictive analytics to bolster its delivery of personalized experiences. FirstHive uses data from multiple touchpoints to create unified customer profiles that feed into its recommendation engine.

Media mix models (MMM), originally developed in the 1960’s, have undergone a resurgence as new technologies make them easier to execute and click-based attribution becomes less credible. But evaluating MMM brings its own challenges. Australia-based Mutinex offers a vendor-neutral Open Source MMM Validation Framework which is now available for free to North American marketers and agencies.