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.

There’s lots of interesting data  in this Ascend2 report on multi-channel marketing, but what stood out for me was that measurement was cited as essential for success by far more respondents (61%) than other factor.  Next highest was integrated technology at a meager 43%, and unified data was last at 27%.  Now you know we write so much about measurement products.