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Top Stories Snapchat Now Supports Web Links, Adds Backdrops MediaPost (7/5) “To stay one step ahead of the game, the company recently unveiled an opt-in Snap Map feature. Users can track their friends’ whereabouts in real-time. With this tool, smartphone users can now virtually scan their physical surroundings and see where friends are posting snaps and stories.”
China’s Alibaba Debuts Low-Cost Voice Assistant Speaker to Rival Amazon’s VentureBeat (7/5) “China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd launched on Wednesday a cut-price voice assistant speaker, similar to Amazon.com Inc’s 'Echo', its first foray into artificially intelligent home devices. The Tmall Genie is currently programmed to use Mandarin as its language and will only be available in China.”
DeepMind Goes to Alberta For First International Lab Bloomberg (7/5) “DeepMind, the London-based artificial intelligence company, is hiring three prominent computer scientists from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, to establish its first research facility outside the U.K. DeepMind is owned by Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google.”
Industry Perspectives Accenture is Touting an AI-Driven Programmatic Video Ad Digiday (7/5) "The software uses machine learning to learn from and simulate human vision. In this way, it can run simulated eye-tracking to create attention heat maps for any video automatically, then decide what the viewer is paying attention to and place a product in the corresponding area in real time.”
Verizon Reportedly Wants To Rent Data From Rivals For Ad Targeting MediaPost (7/5) “In what would be one of the largest data integration deals in history, Verizon Communications says it wants to license customer facts and figures from rivals such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Vodafone and Telefonica to use for ad targeting.”
CIO Quick Takes: How IT Leaders Employ Agile and DevOps for Strategic Advantage CIO (7/5) “Agile and DevOps are disciplines that can undergird this sort of strategic environment in an IT department. They represent the rapidity and quality control that IT leaders and customers demand. In this edition of our ongoing Quick Takes series, IT leaders from the CIO Executive Council describe how they have employed agile and DevOps for strategic advantage.”
Fox Completes Its First Upfront Under New Ad Sales Chief With 6% to 8% CPM Increases Adweek (7/5) “This was the third upfront in which Fox Networks Group sold inventory across its entire portfolio. Fox’s prime-time lineup and its cable networks each recorded CPM increases of 6 percent to 8 percent. Fox’s upfront gains are the latest indication that the upfront market was stronger than anticipated.”
Who Cares About Smart City Security? CSO (7/5) “People and organizations now demand constant connectivity with machine learning to make sense of the volumes of data providing better overall business value, effective customer service and perfected lifestyle outcomes. Even global cities are vying to be the top 'smart city' in Europe or in the U.S. or in the entire world.”
