In this short video, marketing executives talk about making smarter decisions using data.
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Flipkart unveils 'AIforIndia' programme to drive innovation
Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has unveiled its ‘artificial intelligence (AI) For India’ programme to give a push to its AI ambitions and keep up with rivals Amazon and Alibaba.
The new AI team will be headed by chief data scientist Mayur Datar, with Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal and Flipkart chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy directly working on some key projects.
In an interview, Bansal said that AI will become a significant driving force of innovation and change across varied sectors in the Indian economy and emphasised why India needs homegrown AI solutions.
He said: “Even before AI came into the picture, we’ve seen that you can’t just apply global solutions to Indian problems. You have to think of Indian problems from first principles and then come up with solutions, whether they are visible — like Cash-on-Delivery and payments — or in the background — like warehousing and logistics. For example, we have unique problems in the payments space for which UPI, which is a very Indian innovation, has worked wonders.”
As to how Flipkart is positioned to tackle some of these problems, he said: “Flipkart also has a core tech and innovation DNA, coupled with the best product engineering team in India. We’re investing in cloud and technology infrastructure to build scalable computing capabilities in ecommerce, so we’re positioned very well to tackle problems head on. Ultimately, I believe data, talent and infrastructure are critical factors to be successful in AI — and Flipkart has all three in abundance.”
Alibaba is already using AI to create tailor-made shopping experiences for consumers and targeted marketing for brands as it seeks to “empower people in the virtual economy”. Alibaba Cloud is set to open its first data centre in India to aid SMEs.
Meanwhile, Flipkart’s rival Amazon too, has intensified its AI plans globally. It recently announced Amazon SageMaker, which lets companies build and quickly train machine learning algorithms and Amazon Rekognition Video, which uses AI to detect objects and faces in customers’ video content.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are just getting started, says Spark Capital’s Megan Quinn
Quinn, an investor in the crypto trading platform Coinbase, says “the toothpaste is out of the tube.”
The decentralized virtual currency called bitcoin has been around for nearly a decade, but it’s just recently starting to find mainstream attention and, in some circles, acceptance. That shift is thanks in no small part to the skyrocketing value of bitcoin, the world’s best-known “cryptocurrency,” from $1,000 near the start of the year to nearly $20,000 today.
For investors like Spark Capital General Partner Megan Quinn, “the toothpaste is out of the tube.” On the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Recode’s Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Casey Newton, Quinn explained her investment in Coinbase, a company that is trying to position itself as the safe place to trade cryptocurrencies.
“People were sleeping on each others’ couches and renting rooms before Airbnb, but Airbnb provided that really safe, clean, approved — you got feedback, it was a transaction,” Quinn said. “You felt good about it. We think Coinbase is providing that sort of experience for trading crypto.”
You can listen to Recode Decode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Someday, Quinn said, the value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin will level off enough that we will be able to start treating them like real money. But that day is not today.
“Today it’s speculative, 100 percent,” she said. “One of the folks on my team said he was liquidating his 401k to buy in, which made me pretty nervous. I’m optimistic that it will actually be a tool for transacting, once we reach some steady state.”
“In a world where it’s going up by a thousand dollars every couple hours, you don’t want to go to Overstock.com and buy a mattress,” Quinn added. “But if we can get to a place where it’s steady-state, I think there’s real opportunity there.”
So, who should buy into bitcoin now, when the price is so volatile? Talking to Swisher and Newton a few weeks ago, when the price was a measly $17,000, Quinn warned not to trust any of the “false prophet[s]” who claim to know when the roller coaster ride will be over; buying in now only makes sense for people with a lot of disposable income, she added.
“If you have a spare $17,000 that you are fine seeing go to zero, okay, fine, that’s not the worst way to spend it,” she said. “I don’t think cryptocurrencies, or bitcoin specifically, is ever going to go to zero. But I think if you’re someone who’s willing to have it go to zero, then you can ride out the stomach-lurching volatility that we’re going to continue to see for a while.”
If you like this show, you should also sample our other podcasts:
- Recode Media with Peter Kafka features no-nonsense conversations with the smartest and most interesting people in the media world, with new episodes every Thursday. Use these links to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- Too Embarrassed to Ask, hosted by Kara Swisher and The Verge’s Lauren Goode, answers the tech questions sent in by our readers and listeners. You can hear new episodes every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- And Recode Replay has all the audio from our live events, including the Code Conference, Code Media and the Code Commerce Series. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you like what we’re doing, please write a review on Apple Podcasts — and if you don’t, just tweet-strafe Kara.
What is TV DMP?
What is TV DMP? How can you combine TV viewership data with other behavioral audience data to reach your consumer across screens and devices? Learn more about Lotame TV DMP at https://www.lotame.com/products/tv-dmp/
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‘Always On’ is at the heart of every ABM strategy — here’s why
As a B2B marketer, you are often caught trying to serve two masters: the need to drive engagement for specific campaigns or periods relative to the business vs. the overall goal to drive persistent ROI throughout the year. In any scenario, it’s becoming more clear that the “campaign” mentality no longer serves.
Even marketing’s cousin, advertising, has evolved. In the age of programmatic and audience-based, data-driven marketing, advertisers have already moved away from the campaign a
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Lotame Customer Stories: Publishers
Hear how Lotame’s data management platform (DMP) has helped leading media companies increase CPMs, sell more media, and improve ROI. Learn more about how Lotame works with publishers around the globe at https://www.lotame.com/solutions/publishers/
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Digiday’s winners and losers of 2017
2017 was the biggest year in media and marketing since 2016. Whether it was the duopoly increasingly controlling the digital ad market, digital publishers and traditional media companies fighting back against the duopoly, advertisers pressuring the duopoly to improve its advertising and measurement products or things that had nothing to with the duopoly, the duopoly reigned supreme. But Google and Facebook weren’t winners on all fronts. Here are Digiday’s biggest media and marketing winners and losers of 2017:.
MarTech Today: Lotame’s GDPR prep, data breaches of 2017 & planning a CRM stack upgrade
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in marketing technology, as reported on MarTech Today, Marketing Land and other places across the web.
From MarTech Today:
Lotame’s prep for GDPR highlights big changes in data management
Dec 19, 2017 by Barry Levine
There’s tracking consent, providing data access and minimizing liability. Plus there’s the pending ePrivacy Regulation.
Equifax and beyond: How data breaches shaped 2017
Dec 19, 2017 by Robin Kurzer
Could this be a turn
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View Highlights from Lotame Spark Client Summit 2017
Check out some of the key highlights from our must-attend conference for Data Management Platform clients! Lotame Spark Client Summit 2017, March 7th in NYC. #LotameSpark
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‘Lost in translation’: Ad buyers struggle to navigate Amazon’s client services teams
For the past year and a half, Theresa Moore, vp of platform partnerships at Pixability, has been trying to buy video ads on Amazon to no avail. A few months ago, Moore — who said trying to build a relationship with the e-commerce giant has been an “interesting journey” — thought she finally had an in.
Amazon’s user-experience team responded to an email she sent, but instead of giving her the direction she needed to buy, it offered her a $100 Amazon card to learn about her experience trying to contact the company. Moore was flabbergasted: “I told them, keep your $100 and give me the contact information of someone at the company who can help me make progress.” She said she didn’t get a contact, but she kept the $100.
Moore is one of many ad buyers trying to work with Amazon but finding it difficult to secure an Amazon rep and then start the process of advertising through Amazon’s suite of ad offerings, including its in-house team Amazon Media Group, self-serve marketing suite Amazon Marketing Services and programmatic solution Amazon Advertising Platform.
“It’s at a level where you can only develop a relationship with Amazon if you know someone,” said one ad buyer at a large agency who asked for anonymity.
Another ad buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, said their large agency has begun forming a relationship with Amazon after a year of “stalking,” but only because of a major client’s spend.
Digital agency PMG had a similar experience. PMG started reaching out to Amazon about two years ago and didn’t gain traction with the company until a year in, when its client, retailer Cole Haan, expressed interest in spending with Amazon, according to Price Glomski, evp of digital strategy at PMG. That led the agency to acquire eight contacts at Amazon and start building its own internal Amazon practice. In the past year, the agency has spent well into seven figures on the platform, working on campaigns for large clients like Beats By Dre, Glomski said.
But even when ad buyers have an Amazon rep and footing within Amazon, they don’t necessarily get the answers they need quickly.
The makeup of Amazon’s internal client services teams is murky. None of the five ad buyers Digiday spoke with for this story know how Amazon’s client services teams are structured or how many people each has. There is a general understanding that AMG, AMS and AAP all have their own teams, and one ad buyer, who prefers anonymity, believes Amazon has teams structured around specific brands rather than agencies. Still, this person said, “You never have a holistic idea of what’s going on.” An Amazon spokesperson said the company does not reveal how many people work in each division or how many teams fall under client services.
Moore said after months of pestering Amazon, she finally secured her own rep who directs her to other groups within the company that might be able to assist her. But that’s where the help stops.
“It’s such a black box,” said Moore. “They’ve been really nice, but the groups at Amazon don’t know who does exactly what I want, which is to run video ads.”
Even PMG, with its eight contacts and several Amazon campaigns under its belt, has trouble navigating Amazon’s internal client services teams.
“The teams have really focused expertise, so when you ask a question about another ad product or product road map, it tends to get lost in translation, and you have to be directed to another product team,” Glomski said. “Fortunately, the Amazon team we work with is really good, but even they come back to us and say, ‘Sorry, it’s a development in progress.’”
Ad buyers said Amazon is following the playbooks of other ad platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, which were slow to make their client services teams available to agencies and ad tech providers while developing ad offerings. Rather, they initially focused on building relationships with large brands.
“Amazon definitely gives more interest and more resources to the larger brands,” said one ad buyer. For instance, one brand this person works with has its own assigned Amazon contact.
Moore is not surprised that Amazon would take this approach. “At the end of the day, brands are the ones that have the creative and the customers,” she said. “Amazon can get the information they desire straight from the brands without having too many chefs in the kitchen.”
“Everything Amazon does is to benefit Amazon,” said another ad buyer. “Everything they’ve built, from their tech stacks to their ad units to their content pages is all to benefit them, so why wouldn’t they go to brands with the big budgets first?”
But this might not be the best tactic for Amazon, as ad buyers at agencies and brands with smaller budgets get antsy about spending on the platform. PMG’s smaller clients, for instance, are eager to spend more on Amazon. Glomski said PMG estimates another $20 million to $25 million is on the table for Amazon from the agency’s midsize brands.
“You can tell [Amazon] is continuing to grow, so for some of our smaller clients, which are still good brands, they just don’t have as much mind share for them,” said Glomski. “What needs to happen quickly in order for advertisers to not get frustrated with Amazon is for Amazon to start building out their strategic group to help grow and train advertisers that will be in the system.”
Amazon has made strides in the past year, like bringing training teams to select agencies and making client service hires. The fact that Amazon’s user-experience team is reaching out to ad buyers like Moore also shows the company is considering ad buyers’ efforts to advertise with the behemoth.
“Agency relationships are very important to us,” said Seth Dallaire, vp of worldwide sales and marketing for Amazon Media Group. “We’ve made investments in both agency development and services as our advertising business grows, and this will continue to be the case.”
Some agencies are seeing the effects of these investments. “They’ve gotten much better in terms of having contacts you can work through, and they’ve made themselves more available to agencies,” said Kevin Packler, vp and director of Amazon services at independent agency The Tombras Group.
But Glomski warned that until the majority of ad agencies and smaller brands feel they are getting the attention they need from Amazon, other platforms with robust client services teams like Google and Facebook will continue to retain more market share. This is especially true, he said, when it comes to transparency and data, another area in which Amazon is known for being a black box.
“With Google and Facebook, any CMO can go in and pick apart different aspects of their marketing strategy,” said Glomski. “If Amazon can provide optics to performance on a daily and hourly level, which is what most marketers today need, that will create a sense of trust and willingness to spend $10,000 dollars a day on Amazon.”