Indeed, the looming GDPR deadline has concentrated the minds of advertisers on data quality. DigiDay reports advertisers and agencies are demanding proof that data was acquired in GDPR-compliant fashion. The net result may be to remove marginal data sources from the marketplace (good) and to increase the power of data gathering giants like Google and Facebook (maybe not so good).
Intouch Insight, which captures customer feedback through surveys, social media, and more, has launched an experience management system that tracks customers, identifies problem areas in their journey, and helps companies run campaigns to improve results. The system combines its own data with information from CRM and other systems and can use the results to create target lists for campaigns.
UrboLabs would eliminate print ads by connecting consumers directly with merchants. The vision is a tad grandiose (“become a single consolidated platform for users to interact with the world around them”) but they do have a cute map-based interface that lets consumers pick the businesses they want to hear from. They just launched in New York and New Jersey and received an undisclosed amount of new funding. Don’t confuse them with Urbo the bike sharing service or Urbo the parking meter payment system.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.