Did someone say location data? Narrative will sell you that, along with demographics, devices, purchases, Web behavior, TV viewership, and other data from 30+ providers. Its online marketplace aims to remove the traditional hassle from customer data buying. Narrative just raised an $8.5 million Series A, bringing their total funding to nearly $14 million.
Let’s peer today at life’s second-most interesting topic: consumer behavior. We’ll start with this Unruly report (that’s the company name; the report is well-behaved) on connected TV viewers. Headline finding is 73% of U.S. consumers would rather watch ads on free TV than pay for ad-free TV content. Times being what they are, consumers are even more likely to seek free options: 35% have tried a new ad-supported streaming service since the pandemic began and 79% plan to continue.
Whatever happens to Audience Network, Facebook is working hard to build its ecommerce business. Its latest step is Facebook Shop, a new section in its main app that lets users buy from multiple merchants. This is a big step up from the Facebook Shops that exist on merchants’ own pages. Raise your hand if you think becoming more dependent on Facebook is a good idea.
Salesforce kicked off its big Connections conference yesterday, and if you’re surprised the focus was on generative AI, you haven’t been paying attention. Still, the focus this time was on marketing applications that draw on Salesforce CDP data, so it’s right up our alley. They also announced direct access to Google BigQuery data, ticking the “zero-copy” box as well.