• Nearly half of consumers are undecided, one in three do not trust AI at all

• A comparatively higher 31% of consumers under the age of 45 trust AI

Only 20% of American consumers ‘mostly’ or ‘completely’ trust Artificial Intelligence (AI) according to the fifth wave of the dunnhumby Consumer Trends Tracker (CTT) released today. Americans’ trust in AI is higher than other markets such as the UK, where the figure is 14%. The quarterly study – now completing its fifth quarter – found that the level of trust Americans have in AI is largely dependent on age. While younger consumers — under the age of 45 — have a higher level of trust in AI (31% ‘mostly’ or ‘completely’ trust AI), just 8% of those aged 55 and over ‘mostly’ or ‘completely’ trust AI.

The demographic groups that are more likely to trust AI are males (29%) versus females (14%), families with kids at home (29%), households earning more than $100k (37%) and those living in urban areas (32%) the CTT study found. In addition, respondents under 45 were the age group most enthusiastic about using AI based technology for budgeting, personalization, and sustainability which would thereby prove a genuine competitive advantage for grocers. The CTT is part of The dunnhumby Quarterly, an ongoing strategic market analysis of prominent retail themes. The fifth wave of this report is the first wave to address consumers’ feelings about AI. Two thousand consumers were surveyed for the fifth wave of the report.

“What many Americans may not realize is that they have been interacting with AI for years whether it is through Netflix recommending what they should watch next or a retailer serving up personalized offers based on consumers’ past purchases,” said Matt O’Grady, President of Americas for dunnhumby. “The potential of Artificial Intelligence in grocery is tremendous and has been at the foundation of our own data science here at dunnhumby for over 20 years. Although the trust in AI is far from widespread, grocers should bear in mind it only took ChatGPT two months to hit 100 million users, making it one of the fastest growing computer applications ever.”

Key findings from the study:

• The top five concerns respondents have about AI are 1) loss of jobs, 2) security and privacy, 3) loss of human touch, 4) technology 'in the wrong hands’ and 5) misinformation.
• Security (46%), personalized rewards and recommendations (45%), and budgeting (42%) are the three most popular grocery use cases for AI according to the survey respondents. For consumers under 45, a group that is struggling the most with food insecurity, the most appealing use of AI was for personalized rewards and recommendations (58%), followed by budgeting (57%).
• For older consumers, 55 and over —an age group that is otherwise distrusting or disinterested in AI— security (e.g. store surveillance, theft prevention, fraud detection) is the most appealing use (40%).
• When asked about the potential benefits of AI, respondents talked broadly about its potential to ‘help’ people (1). Respondents also ranked healthcare and medical (2), saving time (3), improvements and convenience (4), and research, knowledge and information (5) as potential benefits of AI.
• The increasing willingness of consumers to engage with loyalty programs signals an opportunity for grocers to use AI to deliver more advanced personalization. With 52% of consumers now identifying themselves in order to redeem rewards, and 56% saying its very or extremely important that a retailer rewards them for shopping there signals the time is now right for retailers to step up their personalization efforts.
• Mounting food insecurity (30% of 18-34 year-olds ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ do not have enough to eat), and fiscal conservatism, underpin the appeal of AI to help shoppers budget for groceries. Over half of younger consumers – under the age of 45 – shop around at different stores to find the best value (52%) and check prices online before/during a shop (51%).
• For consumers under 45, 51% reported the use of AI for forecasting, stock and waste management as very or extremely appealing. Reducing out-of-stocks and excess inventory is a positive use of AI, especially for the 56% of consumers that say it’s very or extremely important that a retailer cares about food waste and has sustainable products and packaging.

Enables Third-Party Vendors to Build Integrations on Fivetran’s Robust Infrastructure, Unlocking Extensive Compatibility with Data Sources and Integrations

Fivetran, the global leader in automated data movement, today announced the launch of two new software developer kits (SDKs) for data source connectors and target destinations. These new SDKs enable third-party vendors to easily develop new connectors and destinations on Fivetran’s powerful platform – unlocking compatibility with their product and Fivetran’s expansive network of 400+ connectors, 14 destinations and 45,000+ users across the globe. The SDK program opens the door for third-party vendors to amplify their platform extensibility and reach Fivetran’s robust and growing data movement ecosystem, with a single, easy-to-use implementation.

Fivetran is building hundreds of connectors via our By Request program. More complex databases and API-enabled software vendors can become Fivetran source partners by writing their own integration on the Connector SDK. Fivetran connectors add value by providing customers with an easy, automated and reliable way to move their data to their destination of choice, efficiently and in an analytic-ready format, for analysis and enrichment with other data.

Data warehouse, data lake and storage vendors can leverage the destination SDK for Fivetran to easily allow joint customers to load their critical business data from any of Fivetran’s 400+ connectors to their destination platform. Centralizing data into a single destination empowers customers to access analytical and transactional data for reporting, efficiencies and predictive analytics.

"Companies that need to unlock data for their customers can leverage Fivetran's infrastructure to build highly secure and scalable connectors and destinations that operate no differently than our native builds," said Fraser Harris, VP of Product at Fivetran. "This is a huge value-add for data source and destination vendors, allowing source vendors to take advantage of the Fivetran network and all its destinations, and destination vendors to activate their product with Fivetran’s extensive and ever-growing list of connectors.”

Key Features and Benefits

• Language agnostic: The gRPC-based SDK allows connectors and destinations to be written in any supported programming language, offering enormous flexibility for developers to reuse existing code or write new code in their language of choice.
• Reduced complexity: The SDK provides templates and a mock environment, allowing third-party vendors to test and deploy connectors with minimum hassle.
• The Connector SDK gives vendors an easy way to provide their customers with a user-friendly solution to sync data between their platform to any Fivetran destination, such as OLAP databases, to power their analytic use cases.
• The Destination SDK offers data warehouse, data lake and storage companies new channels for product activation, giving their customers easy access to 400+ compatible connectors on the Fivetran platform.

What Vendors Are Saying

“Fivetran's gRPC connector interface is well-designed and a joy to implement. The team is great to work with and very receptive to our feedback. We're really excited to offer our customers a robust, easy-to-use ETL pipeline for analyzing data from their PlanetScale database in their tool of choice,” said Phani Raju, Senior Engineer at PlanetScale.

“Writing a connector for Fivetran was a great experience. It’s easy to do and the interface is clearly thought through, especially when it comes to schema changes and transactional data syncs. The gRPC service definitions let you re-use your existing code in whatever language you use. The quick responsiveness from the Fivetran team has been really refreshing as well after our experience with other data sync connector vendors,” said Nipunn Koorapati, Senior Engineer at Convex.

“MotherDuck and Fivetran share the same value of making data analytics easy and accessible to businesses of all sizes," said Elena Felder, Software Engineer at MotherDuck. “We are excited to integrate with Fivetran's new Destination SDK as an official destination in the Fivetran platform, and have loved the collaboration thus far.”

Playground xyz, the leading attention measurement and optimisation platform, today announced its partnership with TVision, the company measuring every second of TV and CTV viewer engagement. With this first-to-market partnership, advertisers can now accurately and scalably measure attention on YouTube CTV in real-time.

Playground xyz, the leading attention measurement and optimisation platform, today announced its partnership with TVision, the company measuring every second of TV and CTV viewer engagement. With this first-to-market partnership, advertisers can now accurately and scalably measure attention on YouTube CTV in real time.

Data from TVision's panel shows that 17.3% of all time spent watching CTV is spent on YouTube, which means that viewers spend more time with YouTube than any other app. YouTube is a pivotal resource for brands to reach consumers. However, captivating and measuring whether an ad actively captured a consumer's attention continues to be a challenge for brands across all digital environments, including YouTube. Playground xyz has been at the forefront of the attention industry, making substantial investments in measuring attention across digital environments, including walled gardens, at scale.

The first-of-its-kind partnership sees Playground xyz and TVision combine datasets to accurately score YouTube across CTV, which now represents an estimated 38.1% of all YouTube viewing. TVision data shows viewers are 74% more likely to co-view CTV content than linear content, they are also 14% more attentive to CTV content than linear. Playground xyz research shows consumers are more likely to actively multitask on an additional device or not be present in the room while content is playing. This results in formats such as Bumper and Non-Skippable ads receiving around 25% less attention than on other devices. The vast differences in the way CTV viewers consume content as compared to mobile and linear require a smarter and more optimised approach to advertising to ensure brands capture the attention they seek.

"At Playground xyz, we are committed to providing our clients with the most advanced solutions to measure attention in real-time with the goal to ultimately help drive their outcomes," stated Rob Hall, CEO of Playground xyz. "Partnering with TVision allows us to expand our attention measurement capabilities into YouTube across Connected TV, enabling advertisers to gain deep insights into their YouTube campaigns across screens.

Without this CTV component, advertisers are missing out on a large and quickly growing part of YouTube viewing, so we're thrilled to be working with TVision as the first companies to close that gap."

This partnership with TVision is a significant milestone for Playground xyz as it adds YouTube CTV to their existing impressive lineup of attention measurement across Display, Video, Facebook, Instagram and more. This comprehensive solution is delivered in an automated and scalable manner, empowering advertisers to make informed decisions around their advertising spends.

Of the partnership, Yan Liu, CEO of TVision, says, "Playground xyz is at the forefront of leveraging attention metrics to improve the value of CTV advertising. We are excited to combine our industry-leading data sets to ensure advertisers are able to better capitalize on the significant advertising opportunities available on YouTube."

AIP is the world's first tech stack built to make attention actionable. Trained and verified by real eye-tracking data from an opt-in panel, it supercharges that data via advanced AI models to measure attention at scale. AIP is directly integrated into the buyers workflows whether that be programmatic ecosystem via partnerships with the world's largest SSPs and DSPs or APIs into walled gardens.

Transaction combines complementary services to empower media sellers, brands, and agencies with broad market intelligence for confident decision-making

MediaRadar, the award-winning advertising intelligence and sales enablement platform backed by Thompson Street Capital Partners and Endicott Capital, today announced the acquisition of Kantar Group’s (“Kantar”) North American Advertising Intelligence unit, Vivvix (the “Transaction”) Vivvix offers competitive advertising intelligence across both digital and traditional media channels, such as mobile apps, streaming services, and social media. This transformative deal positions MediaRadar as the definitive source of advertising data and insights, serving the entire industry ecosystem from media owners to agencies and brands.

“By combining Vivvix and MediaRadar, we offer a complete view of the entire advertising industry,” said Todd Krizelman, CEO and co-founder of MediaRadar. “Together, our unparalleled market intelligence will enable strategic decision-making, allowing media sellers, brands, and agencies to navigate the dynamic advertising landscape with even greater confidence.”

As the ad industry continues to innovate and evolve with new formats across traditional channels and emerging platforms, the need for transparent, trusted, and high-quality data has never been more critical. These insights allow media companies, brands, and agencies to navigate the growing fragmentation and complexity, informing decisions in ad sales, brand strategy, and media planning and buying. The acquisition of Vivvix, with its complementary channel coverage, bolsters MediaRadar’s data capabilities, introducing new areas such as local TV, radio, and search, while also extending its reach into out of home advertising and the Canadian market. Unified as one platform, MediaRadar will deliver the most comprehensive near real-time advertising intelligence available.

“When we launched Vivvix earlier this year, our mission was to become the world’s leading ad intelligence company,” said Andrew Feigenson, CEO of Vivvix. “In joining forces with MediaRadar, we take a significant step toward that goal. We are incredibly excited to work with Todd and his team to achieve a common vision and deliver a complete view of the market to media companies, marketers, and agencies.”

“Today’s transaction brings Vivvix together with a highly complementary business that goes a long way to delivering on their vision of building the most future-facing advertising intelligence business in North America,” added Chris Jansen, Chief Executive, Kantar. “We’re excited about the possibilities that emerge from the combined entity and wish the Vivvix and MediaRadar team well on the next phase of their growth journey.”

Today, more than 20,000 users rely on MediaRadar’s extensive database that tracks more than $200 billion of annual media spend across more than four million brands. Vivvix’s advertising intelligence footprint spans $250 billion-plus in media spend. Together these platforms are relied on by brands, agencies, and media sellers to provide advertising intelligence integral to their core business decisions.

MediaRadar and Vivvix are both AI-powered platforms, with AI used to track and collect advertising insights across media channels, as well as to power sales recommendations and prospecting tools. Following the Transaction, MediaRadar’s expanded resources and capital will allow it to further invest in cutting-edge data and tech capabilities, building next-gen solutions that drive maximum value for its customers and cementing its position as the industry’s analytics leader.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett served as legal advisor and Solomon Partners served as financial advisor to MediaRadar.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges served as legal advisor and Barclays Bank PLC, acting through its Investment Bank (“Barclays”) served as financial advisor to Kantar.

The solution powers OOH audience-based planning and execution as part of omnichannel media mix

TransUnion announced a partnership between its marketing solutions business, TruAudience®, and AdQuick, a leading out-of-home (OOH) advertising platform. The partnership enhances AdQuick’s offerings by integrating with TruAudience’s consumer insights platform and curated audience taxonomy to enable advertisers to plan, execute and buy OOH as part of holistic, omnichannel campaigns.

TransUnion’s identity-based consumer insights and audiences will now give AdQuick customers access to:

• Audience-Based Planning: Utilizing the TruAudience consumer insights modules purpose-built for digital out of home planners, AdQuick’s advertisers can plan their OOH investments alongside all other channels, including Connected TV, Display and Video.
• Audience Data for Campaign Planning and Execution: AdQuick’s platform offers the ability for clients to access TruAudience’s taxonomy as well as additional third-party audiences from AdQuick’s third-party data marketplace.

“OOH has mass reach, is brand safe, and is highly viewable. But historically it’s been planned, executed, and measured separately from other channels, which has resulted in brands chronically underinvesting in OOH. Our partnership with TransUnion will showcase the important role that OOH plays in driving outcomes, and help shift more advertiser dollars to OOH tactics,” said Jason Kunkel-de Cesero, Vice President, Demand & Analytics Partnerships, AdQuick.

TruAudience, TransUnion’s marketing solutions business, transforms marketing and media effectiveness with an end-to-end solution suite integrating identity resolution and enrichment, consumer and media insights, data onboarding, omnichannel targeting, marketing mix modeling, and marketing attribution for brands, agencies, publishers, and technology providers.

“As the media ecosystem becomes increasingly fragmented, marketers must maximize their targeted audience reach with optimal frequency, and OOH is an underutilized channel in achieving those goals,” said Julie Clark, SVP, Media & Entertainment, at TransUnion. “We’re excited to provide the insights and audiences to help AdQuick clients utilize OOH to its fullest extent as a meaningful part of their omnichannel performance marketing plans.”

Vimeo’s end-to-end solution combines capabilities for managing the viewer experience, quickly creating high-quality videos, and distributing content at scale

Vimeo, the world’s most innovative video experience, today announced the launch of Vimeo Marketing, which provides marketers with a single, integrated toolset for video hosting, editing, and distribution – all to help them better engage audiences and grow their businesses through the power of video.

The new offering addresses the growing need for an end-to-end video marketing solution in an era dominated by video, estimated to represent roughly 80 percent of internet traffic today according to industry estimates. With Vimeo Marketing, marketers at organizations of all sizes now have access to a complete set of video marketing tools that can help them drive performance on nearly every channel.

“Video marketing has often been seen as a brand awareness play that was reserved for big brands with big budgets. At Vimeo, our vision is more inclusive – focused on helping more individuals and organizations unlock the potential of video,” said Ashraf Alkarmi, Vimeo’s chief product officer. “Vimeo Marketing is an important part of that vision. It provides a unified set of capabilities that can help marketers everywhere optimize engagement, increase conversions, and build brand loyalty. And it’s all based on our deep experience and innovation from serving more than 300 million users and more than 10 thousand enterprise companies – while serving as a home to more than 650 million ad-free videos.”

As an integrated offering, Vimeo Marketing delivers all the tools that marketers need to exercise complete control over the viewer experience, efficiently edit videos with precision, and easily distribute content to maximize reach. Key capabilities of the solution include:

Managing viewer experience
Unparalleled quality and control over hosting, giving marketers unfettered control over the look and feel of their videos including:

• Multiple audio tracks: Upload as many audio tracks to a single player as you want, and unlock descriptive audio, multi-language audio, and commentary tracks to unlock localization and reach a broader audience.
• Multi-language auto captioning: Go global with automated closed captions in seven languages (English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish) to engage diverse audiences. No manual transcription required.
• New player customizations: Get even more control over the look and feel of your player with our expanded set of player customization controls. Add your brand logo, update your player colors, and toggle certain controls on or off, so you can give your viewers everything they need and nothing they don’t.

Creating and editing
Fast, simplified editing workflows for greater team collaboration—with drag-and-drop footage, text, and audio capabilities, as well as real-time previews and the potential to pair tools with Vimeo’s AI-powered creation suite. The features include:

• Timeline-based editor: Vimeo’s new editor offers the same level of control and flexibility of a professional-grade video editor, but with the added benefit of never having to leave the Vimeo platform.
• Add multiple media assets in a single frame: The new editor also has split-screen effects and allows you to include two (or more) videos or images on the screen at once.

Integrating at scale
More integrations to share videos anywhere and everywhere—allowing you to incorporate ad-free videos into any campaign and close the loop by tracking performance across every channel, from one centralized analytics dashboard, enabling integration with:

• Social video platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, X, and Meta: YouTube integration improvements, for example, enable you to publish directly, simulcast live events, and use ad creation templates designed specifically for YouTube.
• CRM platforms such as Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and others: Updated CRM integrations include added support for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and will soon update Vimeo’s Hubspot integration—to access your Vimeo videos directly from Hubspot and quickly add them to campaign assets.

Vimeo Marketing provides quality, control, and cross-team accessibility in one complete video offering to help marketers, content creators, and business owners engage their audiences, and increase conversions and brand loyalty.

Companies Worry it will be the like the Wild West when it Comes to Data Sharing for Generative AI

New research from Cloudera, the data company for trusted enterprise artificial intelligence (AI), has revealed that more than half of the organizations in the US (53%) currently use Generative AI technology and an additional 36% are in the early stages of exploring AI for potential implementation in the next year. But more than eight-in-ten decision makers for data strategy and management surveyed (84%) are concerned about sharing data with third parties for training or fine-tuning of Generative AI models, alluding to the perception of a still untamed, Wild West-like environment when it comes to data privacy, security, and compliance.  In addition, almost all respondents (95%) believe that full control of data during AI model training is key to trusting the AI outputs.

"Generative AI has taken center stage in boardroom discussions – Whilst analytical AI products have been worked on for decades, ChatGPT has accelerated Gen AI innovation and the road to human level performance has shortened across every industry," said Abhas, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudera. "Yet there are concerns regarding trust, compliance, authorization, and intellectual property. Organizations are apprehensive about the potential exposure of training models using publicly available data and/or receiving erroneous responses from AI models that have NOT been trained with relevant enterprise context. Our survey results confirm our understanding that data moats are real and organizations who have been successful in creating trusted and secure data sources will have an advantage in producing higher fidelity outputs with Generative AI applications."

The survey polled 500 IT decision makers (ITDMs) and data scientists in the US regarding their organisation's status and plans for Generative AI. The results of the study "2023 Evolving Trends: Data, Analytics & AI" were published at the data conference Evolve New York on November 2.

Chatbots most relevant use case for Generative AI
Enhancement of customer communication with chatbots or other tools (55%), support for product development (44%), and concept development (44%) are cited as the main benefits generative AI offers organizations. Also named are support for data analysis (34%), software development (32%) or the automation of activities and processes (28%).

"The success of these initial use cases, such as chat Q&A, text summarization, and co-pilot productivity enhancements, relies on bringing the models to the data, at the point of its creation and origination, and not the data to the models! For example, a large financial institution is currently making 4 million decisions a day by processing all data through their trusted AI Lakehouse," said Abhas.

Former Stackline Executive to Spearhead Enterprise Sales Division for Independent Converged TV Advertising Platform

Innovid, an independent advertising platform for the delivery, personalization, and measurement of converged TV across linear, CTV, and digital, today announced the hire of Alex Rowe as Senior Vice President (SVP) of Enterprise Sales. Based in Seattle, Rowe will report to Tim Braz, Executive Vice President of Global Sales.

In this role, Rowe will be leading Innovid's enterprise sales efforts, working closely with brand and agency clients to advance their objectives in converged TV advertising through measurement and advanced creative technologies.

"At its core, advertising is based on trust, and one of the reasons that Innovid has been successful is because we put transparency at the forefront of everything we do," said Dave Helmreich, Chief Commercial Officer at Innovid. "Building trust is the cornerstone of Alex's professional career. His ability to foster meaningful, transparent customer relationships with data-backed strategies has been core to his decades-long success. His deep expertise in accelerating business growth while supporting clients navigating market challenges will be pivotal as we continue to expand our enterprise footprint."

With more than two decades of sales leadership experience, Rowe was previously Vice President of Sales at e-commerce platform Stackline, where he drove more than $50 million in revenue. He also served in management positions at Amazon and Procter & Gamble.

"With spending on connected TV projected to rise from $25.1 billion in 2023 to $40.9 billion by 2027, marketers need the measurement and creative infrastructure in place to reach connected TV's true potential as an advertising platform," said Rowe. "Innovid is in a prime position to support brands and agencies as 'TV' becomes increasingly digital, and I look forward to leveraging this momentum to scale our client roster."