AI-powered customer data platform Blueshift has expanded into Asia Pacific with Sumit Ramchandani at the helm as MD, months after it raised US$30 million in Series C funding in February this year. Ramchandani was previously CEO of AirAsia Media Group.
With a fast-growing base of digital consumers and merchants, acceleration in e-commerce, and food delivery, the Philippines’ current internet economy has been recorded as the nation with the highest internet economy growth, with a rate of 93%, according to the latest collaborative research from Google, Temasek, Bain & Company. This has previously been predicted to grow from US$9b in 2020 to US$17b this year.
Audigent, which enables ad targeting based on publisher’s first party customer data, has linked its audiences with TransUnion’s TruAudience Data Marketplace. The deal will let advertisers filter publisher audiences against more than 300 audience segments assembled by TransUnion. TransUnion says it has “insight” into 98% of U.S. adults and more than 127 million homes.
YouTube is not just a video platform, of course, it’s also a powerful search engine and it has begun testing a Google AI Overviews carousel that will appear in results for selected queries. Given the threat AI Overviews is perceived to pose to click-thru traffic in Google Search results, there’s a question about whether the YouTube initiative could depress click-thrus to brand and creator videos. Right now, the feature is only visible to a sub-set of U.S. premium users.