As if the marketing landscape weren’t confusing enough, grocery giant Kroger has created 84.51°, an agency that runs marketing programs for packaged goods manufacturers wanting to reach 60 million Kroger-buying households. Channels include in-store advertising, co-branded Web advertising, and a private social network for Kroger’s most engaged customers. Are retailer-based marketing networks the next big thing?

Switching to consumer data integration, we have a very interesting study from cross-device identity vendor LiveRamp about how marketers are using individual-level identity resolution to better measure performance. Nearly everyone (94%) said cross-media identity resolution is needed to accurately assess marketing performance, while just 21% had people-based measurement in place. Almost half (42%) didn’t know how to get started. Other interesting data too.

Unauthorized training data isn’t an existential threat to generative AI but it’s certainly a headache for users and developers alike.  Most developers are trying to exclude materials that creators have explicitly labeled as unauthorized and citing “fair use” as justification for copying everything else.  Getty Images has taken an opposite approach, building its gen AI tool only on materials that are explicitly licensed.  It’s possible that tracing the provenance of training data will become a standard, similar to how organic food producers trace the origins of their ingredients.