Since we’re on the topic, let’s finish with a blockchain-based loyalty protocol from a company called Loyela. It lets merchants reward consumers with transferable tokens. Still in the pilot stage and an initial coin offering is planned for September.
I have no pressing news for you today, although Vista Equity Partners buying a majority interest in ad safety firm Integral Ad Science is sort of interesting, as is Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of Github.
Peering into the future, users choices about which sites to visit will be replaced by AI systems that decide for us. AI vendor Neura offers a glimpse of that world by tracking location with mobile and Internet of Things devices and letting marketers subscribe to “moments” such as “arrived at office”. Anonymized, of course. They’ve just added “True Personas” which uses location history to assign people to categories like “avid runner”, “hard worker” or “late sleeper”. Sign me up! Or maybe they already did.
Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation. The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.