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.
Tofu has raised $12 million in Series A funding to support the ongoing development of its AI-powered unified marketing platform. Identifying worsening “martech bloat” as a problem for GTM teams, Tofu is proffering its platform as an integrated marketing solution with gen AI embedded. This intended to avoid the adoption of multiple AI-related tools with overlapping functionality.