Author: rssmasher

The week ahead features a summary of opinions from the Bank of Japan’s latest monetary policy meeting and data on China’s factory activity.
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The week ahead features a summary of opinions from the Bank of Japan’s latest monetary policy meeting and data on China’s factory activity.
[Read More …]

The week ahead features an inflation reading from Japan, a summary of opinions from the Bank of Japan’s latest monetary policy meeting and data on China’s factory activity.
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The Japanese economy is picking up more and moving toward the central bank’s 2% inflation goal, though only gradually, according to new government data.
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Online advertising is under siege by privacy campaigns run separately by Apple and European regulators. The long-term solution may be for sites to be more explicit about how they make money from customer data.
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It’s a holiday week, but we are still seeing some exciting moves in the martech world. 
MarTech in Motion
HG Data announces new app
The app is available on the Salesforce AppExchange. The Lightning Data app allows customers to access technographics in Salesforce.

Dataxu launches Open AI for Ads
The product uses artificial intelligence to provide analytics to help marketers drive performance and reduce time on campaign management. The first algorithm included in the product is powered b
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XPO Logistics has been a partner of both companies.

Home Depot has held internal discussions in recent months about a potential acquisition bid for XPO, a $9 billion publicly traded company that offers transportation, delivery and other logistics services for big retailers and brands, according to a person familiar with Home Depot’s thinking.

If Home Depot were to make an offer, one main impetus would be to keep XPO out of the hands of Amazon — which the home improvement retailer believes has also considered buying the logistics company, the source said.

Recode could not independently confirm Amazon’s interest in XPO, or if either Home Depot or Amazon have held talks with XPO. Both Home Depot and Amazon have been customers of XPO.

Spokespeople for all three companies declined to comment.

While XPO offers a wide range of logistics and freight transportation services, it is probably best known to consumers as the company that manages the home delivery of heavy items such as furniture and appliances for retailers. The company calls itself “the largest provider of last-mile logistics for heavy goods in North America.”

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that XPO was one of the main companies Amazon planned to work with as it made a big push in furniture sales.

Over the last few years, Amazon has taken over more control of its logistics, buying stakes in cargo airlines, handling more package delivery itself and leasing thousands of its own truck trailers.

In 2015, XPO bought the trucking company Con-way for $3 billion, giving it a large fleet of its own trucks to offer freight transportation services. That same year, Home Depot named XPO the “Mid-Size Truckload Carrier of the Year,” according to an XPO press release.

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Not all users who saw that content, however, can take advantage of a new tool out today.

Facebook has rolled out its new hub to help some users figure out if they interacted with Russian propaganda during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The social giant’s tool — available here, through its Help Center — specifically allows users to see if they followed or “Liked” any pages and accounts set up by Kremlin-backed trolls on either Facebook or Instagram.

Over the course of the 2016 election, Facebook estimates that roughly 140 million users may have seen Russian propaganda in their News Feeds or on Instagram. Much of that content sought to sow social and political unrest around divisive issues like race, religion and LGBT rights.

But only a small slice of those 140 million affected users can actually take advantage of Facebook’s new tool, which it first previewed in November. That’s because the portal only aids those who directly followed one of the accounts or pages set up by Russian sources on Instagram and Facebook. It does not help users who may have simply seen Kremlin-sponsored content because their friends “Liked” it and it subsequently appeared in their own News Feeds.

Facebook’s new service also doesn’t allow users to check if they saw some of the roughly 3,000 election-timed ads purchased by Russia’s notorious trolls, known as the Internet Research Agency. About 10 million users saw those ads around the election, the company previously has said.

Facebook has said it would be “challenging” to find and notify every single user that may have seen content or ads generated by Russian agents.

Its efforts have nonetheless won it some plaudits from Capitol Hill, where the company’s top lawyer — joined by executives from Google and Twitter — faced a full grilling this November for failing to thwart Russian disinformation online. Exiting a trio of hearings, lawmakers like Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal urged all three companies to notify their users about Russian propaganda they may have viewed.

This is Facebook’s attempt to do that, though the company is unveiling the new portal at an interesting time: The Friday before the Christmas holiday, which is usually reserved for unflattering news dumps.

Facebook, however, previously pledged to unveil it before year’s end. And a company spokesperson told Recode that Facebook will promote the portal to users, though it’s unclear how.

For its part, Google told Sen. Blumenthal in a letter earlier this month that the company could not offer similar aid to YouTube users who had watched videos tied to dubious Russian sources. That’s because “content is accessible regardless of whether or not a user is logged in,” Google said, meaning it “would not be able to identify all those who watched a particular video.”

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