Data Quality Comes To The Forefront; Datorama Raises $32 Million

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Mistaken Identity

Identity graphs are a necessary part of the cross-channel marketing future, but what about data quality? “Not enough focus is on if the data is correct,” OMD managing director Julie Fleischer told Ad Age’s George Slefo at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference last week. “And if the data is wrong, which happens so often, then everything spins out of control.” Cory Treffiletti, Oracle Data Cloud VP of marketing, echoed the comment: “Our industry is starting to talk about quality, but there is no definition for it.” Read it.

Datorama Raises

There’s a growing need to unify marketing analytics across a range of vendors. Datorama, one of the companies working to fill that need, has raised a $32 million round. Datorama now has 160 employees across 14 offices worldwide, with customers including Foursquare, GoDaddy and L’Oréal. CEO Ran Sarig said in a press release, “We’re going to continue to push the boundaries of machine learning and how it’s applied in the marketing analytics capacity.” More.

iChange

Apple’s Spotlight, the iOS device search tool, has for the past year featured a “News” section linking out to stories. But an upgrade is now shifting those outbound readers from the publisher’s mobile site to the Apple News app, reports Jack Marshall at The Wall Street Journal. It’s a small change, but could hurt publishers’ bottom lines. Apple News lets a publisher earn 100% of ad revenue it can sell in the app (and Apple takes a 30% cut if it supplies the demand), but tech and product chiefs from multiple leading news companies openly question the prospects of Apple News bringing equivalent monetization as their own site. Also, traffic from Spotlight to the mobile web is tracked by comScore while the Apple News app remains a black box, thus forcing a panel-based ratings workaround. More.

Up To The Hype

Facebook has integrated a native payment feature with Messenger bots, TechCrunch reports. Users will be able to do things like browse flight times and make payments in Messenger within the chat interface. Bots will be able to access credit card information stored in Messenger to make direct purchases through the platform, supported by integrations with players like Stripe, Paypal, Braintree, Visa and MasterCard. “Inside a thread you have identity, transaction capabilities, the ability to draw UI and draw native buttons and interfaces,” said David Marcus, Facebook’s head of Messenger, to an audience at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. “We’re bringing all these types of experiences together.” Marcus admitted that Facebook’s bot program was a tad overplayed at launch, but now will better live up to its promise. More.

But Wait, There’s More!