Cloud-based communications platform Twilio is buying toll-free messaging platform Zipwhip to expand its multi-channel message delivery capabilities. Price is $850 million in cash and stock. Growth of multi-channel cloud platforms is one of the trends we’ve been watching. You’ll recall that Twilio bought the Segment CDP last year for $3.2 billion.
Explorium clearly isn’t a CDP but it also gathers data in its own way. Specifically, it analyzes predictive models and searches its library for external data sources that could help the models work better. They just raised a $75 million Series C. They also released an interesting survey on external data acquisition: 62% use external demographics data and 51% collect anonymized individual data.
AT&T is spinning off its WarnerMedia unit and combining it with Discovery, Inc. to create an even larger media business. AT&T shareholders will own 71% of the combined business while Discovery shareholders own 29%. This matters to you, Dear Reader, because the new entity will collect even more customer data than before.
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.