One reason for less loyalty has been a decline in service levels, according to Simplr research. A mystery shopper study found that email and chat wait times have increased despite brands using more digital service channels. More subtly: nearly all complex bot experiences ranked as “very poor” unless a human was standing by to help.
U.S. marketers are struggling to measure the return on their programmatic advertising investment, according to this Forrester study for MediaMath. While 94% say they try to measure programmatic ROI, just 33% say they can do it completely and accurately. More than half (55%) say privacy rules are restricting programmatic targeting and 45% say new rules are making it harder to maintain scale.
Gong’s Web site is like a direct view into the subconscious of those hyper-enthusiastic sales people who make the rest of us nuts but get the job done. The actual product is AI technology that captures video, phone, email, and face-to-face interactions and extracts insights about people, deals, and market events. It must work: they just raised a $200 million Series D, bringing total funding to $334 million. Did I mention their chatbot is a bulldog?
CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising. The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products. Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.