MarTech Today: AOL’s Avery bot for marketers, Adblade adds RTB to its WordPress plugin & Pinterest’s Lens app

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:

• AOL’s Area 51 incubator releases first prototype — a bot for its ad tech data
  Feb 8, 2017 by Barry Levine
  Called Avery.ai, it now moves into product development and joins other companies’ efforts to make marketing data more readily accessible.
• Adblade adds self-service RTB to its WordPress plugin
  Feb 8, 2017 by Barry Levine
  Now, third-party demand sources can bid on inventory for the content-like ads run by this competitor to Taboola and Outbrain.
• Kiss your personas goodbye (and say hello, AI)!
  Feb 8, 2017 by Venkat Nagaswamy
  Your buyer personas are about to become as out-of-date as an Altair 8800. Contributor and AI marketing guru Venkat Nagaswamy explains why you’ll be grateful.

From Marketing Land:

• Pinterest’s Lens app turns your phone’s camera into a search bar
  Feb 8, 2017 by Tim Peterson
  Pinterest’s version of Google’s Goggles will roll out to iPhone and Android users in the US sometime soon.

From Around The Web:

• Snapchat Hires Key Engineer to Prevent Instagram From Copying Its Features, Bloomberg
• Competitive Website Audit: 6 Key Things to Look For, Vertical Measures
• How Amazon could shake up the mobile payment industry, Mobile Commerce Daily
• HowStuffWorks Brings Dynamic Advertising to Podcasting, PR Web
• Marketing Technology Platform TUNE Announces New Chief Technology Officer Dan Koch, PR Web
• 4 Advanced Automation Tools To Streamline Your Social Media Without Sacrificing Your Voice, Social Media Explorer
• AI-Fueled Storytelling Takes Customer Experience to the Next Level, CMS Wire
• At Xerox, the Marketing Technology Stack Leaves Center Stage, eMarketer
• Building Blocks: Rob Israch, CMO at Tipalti Talks Marketing Tech, MarTech Advisor
• Introducing AI to Marketing in 5 Steps, AdAge
• Marketing Automation Team Roles, Structure, and Costs, MarketingProfs
• Marketing Tech Shift: It’s Data, not Platforms, eMarketer
• The Technology Part to Your Content Marketing Plan, Razor Social
• WordPress for Android Closes Google+ Community for Beta Testers, WordPress Tavern
• Android Wear 2.0: Make the most of every minute, Google Blog

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech Today. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.