Big moves are reshaping how brands access and use data. Publicis bought LiveRamp for $2.2B to solve identity and attribution across platforms. Qualtrics paid $6.75B for healthcare data specialist Prescani. A retail sensor startup raised $170M to track what actually happens on store shelves. Meanwhile, the supplier world is evolving from selling surveys to building data infrastructure, synthetic respondents need quality standards, and quantum computing could upend everything we know about security.

Plus: why Google's new 3D world-building tool matters, what consumer AI backlash means for research, and why good moderators still beat algorithms.