Customer support is emerging as a primary use case for artificial intelligence, sometimes to replace human agents but more often to help them.  Zendesk just bought AI startup Cleverly for that application.  We also just saw Level AI launch its own AI-based conversational support app with $15 million in funding. Next door in the customer success department, involve.ai just raised a $16 million Series A for AI to predict customer churn.

At the start of 2021, brands, publishers, and ad agencies were all about equally worried about losing third-party cookies.  That changed in a follow-up survey, which found that publishers and agencies are less worried than before while brands’ concern has grown.    An optimist might think agencies and publishers have developed plans that brand marketers don’t understand yet.  A cynic might suspect agencies and publishers have realized they’ll make money no matter what.

With CDP vendors increasing their workforces by 3.4% in six months, compared with an average of 0.2% each six months over the prior two years, the sector seems to be growing again, according to our own semi-annual industry update. There is much talk of composable CDPs but they still employ no more than 5% of the sector workforce. What is a clear trend is the acquisition of independent CDPs by vendors interested in adding a CDP to a larger system (usually an activation system).