Observe.AI, which offers AI-powered insights into contact center interactions, has raised a $125 million Series C, bringing total funding to $214 million. Observe.AI uses speech analysis to understand conversations, recommend responses to call center agents, and execute intelligent workflows.
You may not be used to ads in your emails, but ads on social networks now seem entirely normal. So it makes sense that OpenWeb, which helps publishers build private social communities, just to bought ADYOULIKE, which lets publishers sell ads on those networks. Price was reported at $100 million.
This was going to be a story about Omnicom Media Group’s new programmatic private marketplace for out-of-home display screens, which illustrates trends including programmatic, out-of-home ads, and private marketplaces. But OMG trumped itself with an alliance with Firework to embed shoppable livestream video in brand web sites. That checks the trend boxes for social commerce, video ads, agencies offering adtech, and bypassing conventional ad channels.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.