Let’s wind up the year with some topics that we expect to be important in 2018. We’ll start with a pair of studies from video production tool vendor Magisto, which found American businesses spent $135 billion in 2017 on all types of video (not just marketing). The primary distribution channels are social media and company Web sites, so money for video is coming out of paid advertising budgets. Kind of a big deal.

So, is it game over for retailers? Should they turn their stores into vast couch showrooms and sell popcorn as customers purchase online? The seriously smart folks at Retail Systems Research don’t think so: they’ve found that successful retailers feel employees should take the initiative in engaging with customers, not just wait for technology to tell them what to do. And, RSR argues employers should invest in quality workers – even raising wages! – to make this possible. That’s crazy talk.

Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore has acquired CDP ActionIQ and cloud data engineering system Infoworks.  The combination of products will create a Zero Data AI Cloud that simplifies AI deployments by enabling companies to access data for AI projects without moving it from existing systems.  Prices were not announced.