Today’s lesson: Personalization is cool but omni-channel personalization is even cooler. Exhibit A is Iterable, which has expanded the reach of its “growth marketing platform” with connectors for direct mail, web push, rich content mobile push and Facebook and Instagram Custom Audiences. Iterable’s core functionality is to send segments and personalized messages to external systems for delivery. It works with any type of data but doesn’t manage a unified database on its own.

Can ad exchange bids provide a useful source of location data? A study from Placed, which captures location data from apps, found that only about 1% of ad exchange bid requests provide out-of-home locations accurate enough to measure in-store traffic. It’s self-serving but nevertheless worth reading for an excellent explanation of the data quality issues.

Tech is fun but a little caution is always a good idea.  This Pentagon-funded report on blockchain says that, whatever its theoretical virtues, existing real-world implementations contain major security weaknesses.  Raise your hand if you’re shocked.