And here’s IDenTV, which uses AI to identify faces, objects, logos, scenes, and activities within videos. It stores them as metadata so the videos can be searched, analyzed and used to train other AIs. You read that right: the machines are making other machines smarter.
Grapeshot calls itself a ‘contextual intelligence platform’, which could mean just about anything. What they really do is analyze and classify Web page content. The main application these days is brand safety – that is, avoiding placing ads on pages with objectionable messages. Oracle just bought them for an undisclosed amount.
Is personalization as important as marketers think? When customer care vendor Narvar asked retail shoppers why they’d give a retailer repeat business, 77% cited fast shipping on replacements for lost or damaged items, 69% said quick refunds on returns, 54% mentioned an accurate delivery date promise…and just 25% cited a personalized experience. Of course, marketers always don’t control those operational practices. But maybe they should try.
CDP mParticle is being acquired by ecommerce platform Rokt for a price of $300 million. It’s the third acquisition of a leading independent CDP in a little over one month, following Uniphore’s purchase of ActionIQ and Contentstack’s purchase of Lytics. All three buyers offer some type of customer-facing technology; apparently they’ve decided that adding real-time profiles from CDP will give them a competitive edge. (See this blog post for more analysis.)