This academic paper concludes that targeted Web ads are bad for consumers because they offer (slightly) higher prices and less well-known products than search ads. It’s a questionable conclusion that was picked up The New York Times under the headline “If It’s Advertised to You Online, You Probably Shouldn’t Buy It. Here’s Why.”
Companies are using 4% fewer SaaS apps this year than last, according to data from SaaS management tool vendor Zylo. The average is still an impressive 291, of which just 56% are used. Utilization is much higher for email tracking (94%) but drops to 30% for data integration. Lots of good stuff here.
Well, that didn’t take long: the excitement over generative AI tools like ChatGPT has already been replaced by growing concerns over their dangers. The Center for Countering Digital Hate found it could easily bypass the guardrails in Google Bard to generate unlabeled misinformation in 78 of 100 tested cases. And, moving from hypothetical to actual, an Australian politician is threatening to sue OpenAI after ChatGPT falsely reported that he was a convicted criminal.
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.