The pandemic may have made it harder for new companies to raise funds, but investors do seem willing to double down on companies that have already reached significant size and industry position. Case in point: cloud contact vendor Talkdesk has just raised a $143 million Series C, raising its total to $268 million and pegging its value at more than $3 billion.
I know this sounds crazy, but what if all those third-party cookies we’re so worried about losing don’t really make advertising more effective? Privacy-friendly browser Brave and Dutch publisher NPO found just that: ad revenues rose sharply when they switched from people-based to contextual targeting. Without a proper control, we don’t know if the switch to contextual was the real reason for the change, but it’s still an intriguing thought.
An unknown hacker has been finding unsecured online databases and replacing their contents with the word “Meow”. Cute, except that no one knows if the hacker is stealing the data first. He or she has now hit more than 1,500 databases, a reminder that poor security is common and motivator for data owners to improve it.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.