Some surveys suggest that most companies have unified their customer data but many more show the industry has a long way to go. This Forrester study for NIQ falls into the latter group, with just 24% of respondents reporting they can track customer behavior across ecommerce and in-store retail channels. Nearly two-thirds (63%) has eleven or more data sources for omni-channel measurement.
Streaming video companies have belatedly recognized that advertising can be more profitable than subscriptions, and are pushing paid subscribers to switch. Amazon just introduced its own typically arrogant twist on the concept, unilaterally placing all Prime Video customers in an ad-supported plan unless they choose to pay $2.99 per month more than their current $14.99 monthly Prime member fee.
Poland’s Office for Personal Data Protection (UODO) is accusing ChatGPT creator, OpenAI of numerous violations of GDPR, including processing data in an unlawful, unreliable manner and not being transparent. This is in response to accusations brought by a privacy and security researcher. While the regulator anticipates it will be a difficult investigation, the regulator is moving it along very rapidly.
Salesforce announced three enhancements to Salesforce Data Cloud at Dreamforce this week. There is an expansion of unstructured data types it can address including audio and video; there will be a sub-second “real time” layer for data from ingestion to activation; and the connector eco-system has been expanded. Salesforce also emphasized close collaboration between Data Cloud and its new Agentforce AI bots.