CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 17 December 2020

Verint debuts Engagement Data Management

Customer engagement outfit, Verint, has launched its Engagement Data Management (EDM) solution, part of the Verint Cloud Platform, the new solution to provide a uniform and cohesive view of interaction data drawn from data sources across communication and collaboration platforms.

The enterprise-wide Interaction Data Hub normalises interaction data, including multimedia and extensible metadata, and organises it in a consistent way to make it easy for applications and other data lakes to consume. It also provides a broad set of out-of-the box APIs and adapters to bring together interaction data from any customer engagement source including CCaaS, UCaaS and collaboration platforms.

The platform supports data enhancement through Verint and third-party analytics, as well as a free enrichment API; provides granular control of data access and retention to help preserve the source of record by safeguarding the integrity, reliability, accessibility and lifecycle management of all data; and enforces workflows to support best-practice data governance, security and compliance.

Wirewax launches shoppable video technology

Interactive video outfit, Wirewax, has launched its new app, Interactive, which allows viewers to pause a video using their TV remotes to explore and even buy what they see through Google.

Using Interactive, viewers can also pause and get the names of actors, bios, a full canvas of their work; gain access to ingredients, recipes and the tools in cooking videos; and turn a paused frame into a shareable meme with creative graphic layers.

Cisco acquires IMImobile for US$730 million

Cisco Systems has agreed to buy customer service software platform, IMImobile, for $US730 million.

The deal comes as Cisco seeks to add artificial intelligence capabilities to its existing customer relationship management solution in order to improve the way its customers communicate with their end users.   

With the addition of IMImobile, Cisco said it will be able to automate the outreach process more effectively. For example, it will be able to provide customer representatives with contextual information about the customer and help customers connect with end users through their channel of choice.  

Adtech outfits establish new programmatic DOOH standards

Six digital-out-of-home (DOOH) platforms - Adomni, Broadsign, Place Exchange, Verizon Media, VIOOH and Vistar Media - are coming together to standardise DOOH data and help drive programmatic DOOH forward.

The consortium of adtech outfits released a new set of recommendations, aligned with OpenRTB2.5, for labeling DOOH inventory in programmatic marketplaces based on screen type, audience and environment. Ensuring a mutual understanding between the DOOH buyer and seller in the bidstream and during the media transaction, these standards open up new inventory discovery opportunities, improve targeting and promote greater knowledge equality within the programmatic DOOH industry. 

TechTarget to Acquire BrightTALK

TechTarget, which specialises in B2B technology purchase intent data, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire BrightTALK, a marketing platform for webinars and virtual events in the enterprise tech market.

BrightTALK’s offerings allow marketers to create original webinar and video content and engage 8 million professionals who have registered for the platform. Its solution combines access to decision-makers with a technology platform for creating online events. The acquisition will significantly expand TechTarget’s proprietary first-party purchase intent data and its opt-in audience.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

ArthurAI raises US$15 million

ArthurAI, which is an artificial intelligence(AI) monitoring solution, has raised US$15 million in a Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, with participation from aCrew Capital, Homebrew, Work-Bench Ventures, AME Ventures and Plexo Capital.

ArthurAI monitors the performance and outcome of machine learning models to detect if models are experiencing data drift, exhibiting algorithmic bias or just not performing as expected. Machine learning models are developed in labs in idea conditions but can deteriorate in rea-world situations and ArthurAI has experienced substantial growth this year with a growing focus on robust AI algorithms and detecting algorithmic bias.

Truera raises US$12 million in Series A funding round

In other funding and AI news, Truera, a startup developing a machine learning model intelligence platform, has announced it has raised US$12 million in a Series A funding round.

The round was led by Wing VC, with participation from returning investors, Conversion Capital and Greylock, and new investors, Data Community Fund, B Capital Group and Harpoon Ventures. This brings Truera’s total funding to date to US$17.3 million.Truera will put the funds toward product R&D and expanding its geographic footprint.  

Truera’s model intelligence software aims to help companies improve the quality and accuracy of their models, boost collaboration and address responsible AI concerns, including explainability and bias. Truera’s technology builds on six years of AI Explainability research performed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), which pioneered many of the methods becoming the standard for explaining popular ML models such as Tree models and Neural Networks.

Building on this research, Truera’s AI explainability technology, devised by co-founders, Anupam Datta and Shayak Sen, says it addresses deficiencies in the industry’s first-generation open source software, enabling faster and more accurate AI explanations and analytics. 

Amanda AI debuts in Australia  

A Swedish digital marketing company that aims to enable smarter ecommerce through AI-powered ad optimisations has officially launched in Australia.  

Amanda AI aims to help brands and retailers enhance spend in Google-based search marketing by optimising search and shopping campaigns using machine learning. It was created in Sweden three years ago and works by undertaking an exploratory audit for any company that runs search marketing and enables them to access the platform via a self-service model.   

The offering works by automatically indexing customers' pages and picking up information such as URLs, products and words, which is then entered into a data model. That data is fed into the Google keyword bidding program and optimises paid media campaigns. Amanda AI calculates, based on the probability of a consumer undertaking a transaction online, what price a company should pay for the click, defines its target audience and adjusts bid prices for future ad spend.   

With retailers and companies with large product portfolios firmly in its sights, Amanda AI has already been employed by the likes of Xerox, Hertz and Logitech. The local business is being brought to Australia by tech design studio, The Innovation Chapel.    

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