How often do you find yourself saying, I wish I had more apps to talk to? Apparently, often enough that the folks at Native Voice have just raised $14 million for an app that listens for you to call other apps, and wakes them when summoned. It’s a dream come true, if your dream happens to be The Brave Little Toaster.
Here’s a sign of the times: Salesforce has confirmed it is no longer selling its Audience Studio DMP, which started as its $700 million Krux acquisition in 2016. Current users will be supported but the company expects third-party audiences to be loaded into its CDP in the future, and first-party audiences to be pushed to Facebook, Google, Amazon and other closed ad platforms via Advertising Studio.
Privacy-focused browser Brave has also been listening to consumers, with their permission of course. They found that 70% of survey respondents find it creepy when they see online ads related to previous Web searches, and 81% would reward brands that gave them more control over how many ads they see. Brave also ran a test that found ads served in an opt-in environment had a positive impact, but I didn’t see results compared with ads in a conventional environment.
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.