The death of cookies is a bitter pill for many of us to swallow, but it’s a transition that’s been a long time coming.

Since the beginning of online advertising, the potential to target consumers based on every little behavior meant that the internet wouldn’t just sell people stuff. It would work better than any other channel.

Now, digital marketing has become a victim of its own success. In the right hands, it sells products and creates great experiences. In the wrong hands, it swings elections, spreads misinformation and turns people against each other.

The era of cookies funded an entirely new media landscape – one where there are more aware and engaged users than ever before. A place we’ve never had more accessible tools that let us build better content and user experiences.

Even as the days of targeting consumers come to an end, the goal of better meeting consumers “where they’re at” remains. That means we have two great tasks at hand: telling stories that matter, and using strategies that put the consumer’s real needs front and center throughout.

– Robert Ravensbergen is the conversational AI evangelist at Automat.ai

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Sprinklr opens operations in Mexico. Sprinklr, the once-upon-a-time social media management platform that now positions itself as a “unified front office for modern channels,” is opening operations in Mexico and Central America, as well as adding a Chicago office. The company has hired staff in Mexico City and started a strategic alliance with CX Team, a Mexico-based consulting firm. “Sprinklr’s local support, combined with their unified platform for customer experience management, supports our strategy. We can now engage students across social channels, learn from their conversations and use these insights to improve services that exceed our student’s needs,” said Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Social Media Strategy Manager Shel-Ha Bahena. Sprinklr says its new hires in Mexico will be focused on supporting the company’s hundreds of clients within the Mexico and Central America regions. 

PathFactory brings 6sense ABM technology into its platform. The content intelligence platform PathFactory is partnering with the ABM orchestration solution 6sense, giving users more insight into account engagement and the content and topics that are impacting the customer journey. “With 6sense’s industry-leading account identification capabilities and PathFactory’s content consumption data, sales and marketing and teams can get deep insight into anonymous buying behavior of individuals and accounts, and deliver hyper-personalized content journeys,” said 6sense CEO Jason Zintak.The integration gives PathFactory access to 6sense’s account identification capabilities, connecting leads to their relevant accounts, as well as showing which content they’ve consumed and for how long. 

Vectra Digital expands its clientbase with iPartnerMedia acquisition. The full-service marketing and web development agency Vectra Digital, which owns proprietary AI technology, announced it has acquired iPartner Media, Inc., a digital marketing and public relations firm. “The digital marketing space is surrounded by outdated services. We want to change that by incorporating innovative and cutting-edge technologies to marketing and sales,” said Vectra Digital CRO Felix Lluberes. “We have been watching Vectra since they came on the marketing landscape in 2017,” said said iPartner Media’s Founder Albert Arguelles who will remain as Vectra Digital’s president, “Being able to combine our expertise and the artificial intelligence technology that Vectra brings is going to result in efficiencies and value.” 

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Is it Time We Declutter CMS? – CMS Wire

How To Design Powerful Narratives On Mobile – Smashing Magazine

Back to Basics: Data Collection in the New Privacy Era – Street Fight

Technology is anthropology – TechCrunch

Google will shut down App Maker on January 19, 2021 – VentureBeat

Explainer: Bezos allegations put phone hacking technology in the spotlight – Reuters