CDP Institute

Of course, we all know that while we’re watching TV, the TV is watching right back. Verizon, whose right to sell your viewing data was just fixed into law, has a Digital Media Services group helps companies create and prepare, deliver, display and monetize online content. They’ve just launched a “Media Xperience Studio” that makes it easier to do such things through non-network (“Over the Top” or OTT) channels. You probably don’t care but it’s a useful reminder that media companies are becoming martech vendors.

Alphonso also watches the OTT watchers, in its case through content recognition software embedded in more than 30 million smart TVs, gaming consoles, mobile apps, and other devices.

LinkedIn will prepopulate advertising forms with data from user profiles, according to this report. The change is positioned as a way to increase response to mobile ads, where data entry by viewers is challenging (unless they’re under 25, which case they type faster on a phone than a keyboard). In reality, it should provide more accurate information and higher conversion rates. Good way to leverage your data, LinkedIn.

Social marketing platform Sysomos has added artificial intelligence-based prescriptive insights to its platform, finding trends in real time and suggesting relevant content to publish. The platform integrates data from earned, owned and paid social channels. This is still treating social as a silo, but at least it’s one big silo for all of social.

The Martech Industry Council, a group of 28 B2B martech vendors and users, found that marketers most enjoy creating new campaigns, programs, and events, and least enjoy managing prospect data, developing workflows, and learning new tools.

Ay-yi-yi-yi. No, we’re not talking mariachi music today (although here’s a version of that song in Russian, in case you’re interested). Instead, we’re doing three items involving artificial intelligence: AI-AI-AI, get it? First up: Networked Insights, a social media monitoring system, has just launched an “AI-fueled audience marketing platform”. The company captures information that people share through Web, mobile, and social network behaviors, builds individual profiles, and then makes them available in audiences that can be reached through Twitter, Facebook, and ad exchanges.

B2B martech vendor Demandbase also uses AI to pull data from the Web, but their announcement today is about using AI to personalize content recommendations on Web pages. The product considers firmographic data, offsite business/behavioral data, historic traffic data and real-time visitor information. It includes automated testing and optimization. It supplements Demandbase’s existing rule-based Web Personalization product.

But wait, there’s more. Site search vendor Celebros now also offers individual-level Web site personalization, based on its semantic site search predictions. As the company says, it’s “the obvious next step after natural language site search”. Natural language processing is definitely a type of artificial intelligence, although Celebros doesn’t use the term. Apparently they didn’t get the memo. Ay-yi-yi indeed. (Fun fact: I couldn’t find a search function on Celebros’ own Web site.)

Customer data platform vendor ActionIQ has received $13 million in Series A funding. The company launched its system last November. It has a rich big data heritage: co-founder Tasso Argyros previously founded Aster Data, and co-founder Nitay Joffee was a core contributor to HBase and Giraph.

Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired Leapfrog Online, a performance marketing agency with proprietary marketing conversion technology. As the deal illustrates, agencies are increasingly taking ownership of their marketing technology. But you knew that.

Leadspace has launched a B2B “audience management platform”, which combines a company’s own data with third-party data, contact databases, social profiles, intent data, and data on the open web. It includes individuals and companies. Data is updated in real time and made available to other systems for analysis and execution. In other words, it’s a B2B CDP. Leadspace’s original predictive modeling services will be part of the new solution.

Web personalization vendor Monetate has announced a new product that uses machine learning to select the best messages for each individual in real time. The company will continue to offer its test-based optimization system.