So far, Alexa ignores me when I ask her to write this newsletter. But smart speakers are already having a huge impact elsewhere. UK-based content marketing agency Delineate found that 24% of U.S. households have a smart speaker and 54% of smart speaker owners have used them for shopping.
Life has many mysteries, and the impact of TV advertising ranks high among them. TVSquared shines a light into this dark corner by correlating ad broadcasts with customer response through phone, apps, mobile, Web, and SMS. They just raised $8 million, bringing total funding to $21 million.
The unifying thread in all this is the value of personal data. Research Intelligencer did some fascinating (to me) research that found most people would consider a rate below minimum wage to be fair pay for time spent viewing ads. The article links to another study that found advertisers actually pay under $3 per hour of consumer time. Equally fascinating (or not).
Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.