CDP Institute

It’s easy to target advertising based on the topic of a podcast. Programmatic ad platform Simpli.fi tackles the harder challenge of targeting in broader media based on location and site content. They just sold a majority stake to private equity firm GTCR.

There’s one more funding announcement today but I know you don’t care. So here’s a little pre-Labor Day treat instead: a Target Marketing survey about the martech buying process. Worst news: just 47% of respondents said they create formal requirements before evaluating products. Better news: buyers take time for online research, demonstrations, and trial installations before making a final choice. (If you do care about funding: it was $21.4 million for VideoAmp.)

I haven’t obsessed recently about Google, Facebook and Amazon taking over the world, but that doesn’t mean I’m over it. ComScore just reported that Facebook and Google own eight of the top ten mobile apps, the top ten apps capture 53% of mobile app time, and mobile apps occupy more than half of all media time. Don’t cry for Amazon: their app was rated most essential by Millenials.,

Indeed, Amazon is nibbling at Google’s advertising business, taking something between $1 billion and $2.5 billion ad revenue in 2016. Google’s ad revenue was about $70 billion last year, so it’s not a big deal yet. But Amazon is famously persistent.

Google is invading Amazon’s turf in turn. They recently signed an alliance with no less than Walmart to make it easier to buy Walmart products through Google Express and the voice-powered Google Assistant. Costco and Target had already done similar deals. What’s that saying – when elephants dance, the ants get crushed? Look up!

B2B data compiler DiscoverOrg has acquired RainKing, which compiles technology sales intelligence. The firms will offer combined data sets immediately and a unified product sooner or later. This is DiscoverOrg’s first acquisition, although further consolidation in the data marketplace seems likely.

More on the data front: mobile media analytics vendor Kochava has launched a self-service data marketplace that lets marketers build custom audiences. The marketplace combines data collected Kochava’s analytics SDK with data from integrated mobile networks, publishing partners, and third party data providers. The Kochava SDK touches more than one billion devices globally.

A mere one billion, you scoff. YouAppi tracks content consumption on two billion people across 4,200 apps and mobile sites. It uses the data to target in-app, on-site, and social advertising for mobile app customer acquisition and retention. The company just launched a “360 Degree Growth Marketing Platform”, which is an extension of its earlier products. But we’re not talking self-service: YouAppi is a full-service agency, currently running almost 17,000 campaigns for 470 brands worldwide.

Amplero, which uses artificial intelligence to generate and optimize highly-segmented marketing programs, announced a $17.5 million Series B funding. The company also announced enhancements to its Learned Insights feature, which presents marketers with human-friendly insights, alerts, and performance measurements.

We wouldn’t usually mention Adobe’s press release touting interesting but not-yet-delivered email applications of its Sensei artificial intelligence. But they cleverly paired it with a good survey on email use.  Too many emails was the common annoyance but people are also unhappy when offers are clearly based on incorrect information. Interestingly, too much personalization and too little personalization were almost equally unpopular.

You know what else annoys consumers? Slow-loading Web pages. An survey from Web performance monitoring vendor Apica found that 32% of U.S. consumers would never go back to a poorly performing Web site or app and another 48% would be less loyal. UK and Swedish consumers were a bit more forgiving.

Gravity4 calls itself “the world’s first A.I. big data marketing cloud”, which sounds suspiciously fluffy but is backed by some substance. They focus mostly on programmatic advertising but have “apps” that support other channels. Latest news is they’ve released a blockchain-based service for paid digital advertising. Bonus trivia: the product is called “Lydian” in honor of Lydia, the first civilization to use coins (not Lydia, the tattooed lady).