Yum! Brands, which owns KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and more, is clearly a martech enthusiast. They just bought online ordering and marketing platform Tictuk, following an early March deal for AI-based consumer insights and marketing analytics firm Kvantum. It’s intriguing that Yum! wants to own this technology, especially since McDonald’s may sell part of the Dynamic Yield personalization platform it acquired in 2019.
Concern that testing its Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoCs) might violate EU privacy laws has led Google to confine testing to the U.S. and other countries with lower privacy standards. Stay tuned.
Marketers may or may not love AI, but vendors keep trying. Anyword, formerly Keywee, recently added a $19/month pricing tier and enhanced its “Language Optimization Platform,” which promises to pick the best word for performance marketing ads. Meanwhile, AI-powered video ad creator Pencil has partnered with ecommerce funding provider Clearbanc to offer Pencil’s services to the 4,000+ Clearbanc-backed companies.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.