AI Acquisition: Yahoo Enters AI Era With Purchase Of News App Artifact
Last year, we profiled Artifact, an AI-driven personalized news feed that intrigued us as a potential Twitter-alternative.
“Its machine-learning systems will be primarily optimized to measure how long you spend reading about various subjects — as opposed to … what generates the most clicks and comments — in an effort to reward more deeply engaging material,” The Verge’s Casey Newton wrote at the time.
Earlier this year, it appeared Artifact’s time was up before it had a real chance to flourish as the founders announced it was being shuttered. Cut to last week, when it was announced that Yahoo of all tech-players would be acquiring the company and providing that investment.
Marketplaces Lose Share In Places Where U.S. Shoppers Start Their Shopping Journeys
40.4% of U.S. shoppers started their shopping journeys in marketplaces in 2023, down from 51.5% in 2022, according to a February 2024 report from Attest. Over the same period, use of search engines, brand websites, social media, and voice assistants all increased.
Wieser Revises ’24 Upward, Again
Citing improvements in the U.S. economy, ad industry economist Brian Wieser revised his ad outlook up for the second time since first benchmarking his estimate in September 2023. Wieser now projects the U.S. ad economy will expand 5.6% this year — up from the 4.3% he originally projected in September 2023, and up from 5.2% in his last upward revision in November 2023.
The State of Marketing Automation 2024
28% (an increase of 3% from last year) of marketing professionals surveyed feel that their current marketing automation strategy is best-in-class in supporting their efforts to achieve marketing objectives. 69% of those surveyed feel they see some success from the automation they have in place, and only 3% report that automation is unsuccessful. There is no debate about whether automation is successful; the only question is the best strategy to implement to make it even more successful.
