Voice recognition isn’t new, but it’s much more important now that devices like Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri are capturing consumer intent.  (See this blog post for a deeper analysis.)  So it’s worth noting that Adobe Analytics can now extract information from speech captured on voice-enabled devices.  This will make it easier for companies other than the device owners to use data from those interactions, assuming the outsiders are granted access to what’s said.

And again: purchase data aggregator IRI has launched the IRI Personalization Suite, which combines IRI’s own point of sale, panel, credit card, and location data with information from more than 250 million shopper loyalty cards.  The data can be used for planning, advertising audience creation, media optimization, and results measurement.  It’s a cloud-based game-changer!

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.