Retina’s founders didn’t get the memo that AI is no longer cool and have positioned their system as using it to predict customer lifetime value. They take the rather hostile attitude that “a majority [of new customers] are poison for the business” and promise to weed the bad ones out quickly. They just raised $5 million from backers who probably expect the majority of their investments to fail but miss the irony.

And since we’re looking at surveys about data, let’s finish with this DigiDay report for Bannerflow, which found that 41% of companies make better use of their data after bringing technology in-house. Most intriguing finding: companies with a stand-alone in-house agency fell to 36% from 59% a year earlier. They either made embedded agency skills in their marketing teams (35% vs 23% the year before) or went back to external agencies (29% vs 17%).

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.