Perhaps because Target had seemed sincere in its support for minority groups including the LGBTQ+ community, the announcement that it would end its DEI initiatives sparked anger and calls for a boycott. Other brands, such as Walmart, are taking similar negative steps. Some 98% of Costco shareholders, however, voted down a proposal to conduct a risk analysis of its DEI program.
Marketing and advertising holding group Dentsu has announced the launch of Adobe GenStudio Dentsu+, combining Adobe’s AI content creation platform with Dentsu’s services and the Dentsu-owned Merkury ID platform. The result is described by Dentsu as a “content supply chain platform” for its clients. This is further evidence that the larger agencies and holding companies are becoming, in part, tech companies too.
The Identity Theft Resource Center reports that 2024 data breaches reached the second highest level since they started tracking them in 2005. The number (3,158) fell just 44 short of 2023’s record level. Because the total includes six “mega-breaches” involving 100 million to 560 million victims, the total number of notices served to individuals quadrupled from 400 million to 1.7 billion.
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.