Artificial Intelligence

Toys “R” Us has enlisted Eyeview, a leading provider of personalized digital video advertising solutions for brand marketers, to help the retailer promote Black Friday deals, boost foot traffic and ultimately increase sales.

The solution, called the Black Friday Booster, enables retailers to deliver thousands of personalized, hyper-local targeted video ads, customized by individual customer preferences and local store deals.

New York -- The hot social-sharing site Pinterest has released its first API for developers. It will help stores and brands display which of their items were most frequently and recently pinned. The first partners for the service include Zappos, Walmart, Disney, and Nestle, reflecting how the site is looking to increase revenue generation with advertising and cross-marketing. (An API, short for application programming interface, is code that allows developers to create apps that interface with a popular web service or other software.)

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Under Armour is in the process of acquiring MapMyFitness, a fitness technology company powering one of the world's largest digital fitness communities.

Under Armour will leverage the fitness platform to expand its digital capabilities. MapMyFitness has one of the largest connected fitness communities in the world and offers a diverse suite of websites and mobile applications under its flagship brands MapMyRun and MapMyRide. Utilizing GPS and other advanced technologies, MapMyFitness provides users with the ability to map, record and share their workouts.

Swansea, Ill. -- CrowdSource, a leading provider of managed crowdsourcing solutions, announced it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire San Francisco-based Servio, a competitor in the enterprise crowdsourcing industry. The acquisition will strengthen CrowdSource’s client portfolio, expand its workforce and augment its current service offerings.

Toronto -- To help increase profitability, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) launched a promotion optimization initiative in Canada to improve the ROI of its flyers, or newspaper ads. HBC worked with Saferock to develop the solution, which uses sophisticated analytics to analyze millions of records each week.

Facing an increasingly competitive retail landscape, Canadian retailer Loblaw Cos. posted a slight lift in retail sales but, due to incremental margin investment in the back half of the year, lowered its earnings growth expectations for 2013.

However, company executives are optimistic as the company remains focused on investing in what it refers to as the “customer proposition” and looks forward to its acquisition of Shoppers Drug Mart.

Alvarez & Marsal, a global professional services firm specializing in turnaround and interim management, performance improvement and business advisory services, has hired Tom Phelps as a managing director. He will help retailers in the U.S. and worldwide improve business performance.