More than half (62%) of U.S. retailers have more than 50 systems holding consumer data, according to this Deloitte study. Yikes! Less surprising: just 22% have integrated data privacy plans with business strategy. Not surprising at all: 86% of consumers believe they should be able to opt out of sales of their data while 47% feel they have little to no control over it. Or should we be surprised it’s just 47%?

Marketers hire agencies when they lack in-house skills. Eying the martech talent gap, Interpublic Group spent $2 billion last year to purchase data-driven marketing services company Acxiom. They’ve now launched Kinesso, which will rely on Acxiom to create applications that use data to improve media results. Kinesso will also incorporate Cadreon, Interpublic’s addressable media activation unit.

Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents.  You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better.  It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange.  Price was not announced.