Frequently asked questions
How much work is it to integrate?
All that's required on your side is integrating our tag on your pages. It is fully asynchronous, non-blocking, and extremely light. Integrating it requires zero engineering work if done via a tag manager such as Google Tag Manager or Tealium, or a couple of hours a work to drop our JS directly on your page. Once our tag is on your page, we do the rest with no additional work required on your side: we build a custom model, deliver the predictions back to your site in real time, and send the predictions into the appropriate systems and workflows for activation.
What is the impact on site speed?
We go to great lengths to ensure that our code is best-in-class when it comes to speed. We consistently monitor and optimize code performance. Key practices we follow to minimize impact to site speed include:
Our JavaScript code is always non-blocking. It will not halt the download of any other content on your site, even in the unlikely event that ours fails to load or loads slowly.
Our initial content is loaded asynchronously so that your high-priority content can load first. Whenever possible, we also defer loading portions of our content until conditions are met and the need to utilize that content is imminent.
We use industry-standard techniques for compression to make sure files are as compact as possible. We use industry-standard browser caching to minimize the amount of data a user needs to access across the internet.
We have global instances of our CDN, which minimizes the network latency based on geo-location.
We routinely test our global CDN against other providers to ensure our assets are available and high-performing.
We continuously monitor latency and page load impact across multiple connection speeds, geo-locations, and devices.
Our JavaScript code is always non-blocking. It will not halt the download of any other content on your site, even in the unlikely event that ours fails to load or loads slowly.
Our initial content is loaded asynchronously so that your high-priority content can load first. Whenever possible, we also defer loading portions of our content until conditions are met and the need to utilize that content is imminent.
We use industry-standard techniques for compression to make sure files are as compact as possible. We use industry-standard browser caching to minimize the amount of data a user needs to access across the internet.
We have global instances of our CDN, which minimizes the network latency based on geo-location.
We routinely test our global CDN against other providers to ensure our assets are available and high-performing.
We continuously monitor latency and page load impact across multiple connection speeds, geo-locations, and devices.
What types of data do you use? Do you use 3rd party data?
We only use your first-party data — from your users and how they behave on your site. We don't use any third-party or network data.
We do this for three reasons:
1. It's sustainable. In a world of GDPR, CCPA, iOS14, and cookie-less Chrome, solutions and products built on top of first-party data are sustainable.
2. It's customer safe. We don't require tracking users as they browse the web in order to make high quality predictions.
3. It's powerful. The strongest signals come from how a particular user behaves on your site, not on what he or she may do elsewhere on the web.
We do this for three reasons:
1. It's sustainable. In a world of GDPR, CCPA, iOS14, and cookie-less Chrome, solutions and products built on top of first-party data are sustainable.
2. It's customer safe. We don't require tracking users as they browse the web in order to make high quality predictions.
3. It's powerful. The strongest signals come from how a particular user behaves on your site, not on what he or she may do elsewhere on the web.
Do you comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)?
Yes.
Is Black Crow AI GDPR compliant?
Yes.
Will Apple's iOS14 / IDFA changes impact Black Crow's ability to predict future user value?
No.Black Crow AI predictions are made entirely using our partners' first-party data. We don't use any third-party or network data.
We do to this for three reasons:
1. It's sustainable. In a world of GDPR, CCPA, iOS14, and cookie-less Chrome, solutions and products built on top of first-party data are sustainable
.2. It's customer safe. We don't require tracking users as they browse the web in order to make high quality predictions.
3. It's powerful. The strongest signals come from how a particular user behaves on your site, not on what he or she may do elsewhere on the web.
We do to this for three reasons:
1. It's sustainable. In a world of GDPR, CCPA, iOS14, and cookie-less Chrome, solutions and products built on top of first-party data are sustainable
.2. It's customer safe. We don't require tracking users as they browse the web in order to make high quality predictions.
3. It's powerful. The strongest signals come from how a particular user behaves on your site, not on what he or she may do elsewhere on the web.
How is Black Crow different from Amazon Sagemaker, Dataiku, Data Robot, or Data Bricks?
If SageMaker, Dataiku, and Data Bricks are hammers, Black Crow AI is an entire house.
Those products are suites of tools that allow organizations to build their own, in-house, ML solutions. They enable data scientists, data engineers, and analysts to experiment, build and deploy models, and generate predictions. Making effective use of these platforms requires material investment: staffing up a team of experts to make use of the tools, structuring and normalizing data, determining what predictions to make and what business problem to solve with them, and then iterating and experimenting. They are the hammer.
Black Crow AI takes all of that work away, and replaces it with a plug-and-play platform that delivers custom predictions in real time, on every page load, in milliseconds. We handle data normalization and structuring, model training and performance, daily retraining, and more. We provide guidance on how to deploy those predictions to drive real-world benefit, based on our years of experience with over 300 ecommerce partners. Our predictions are untethered to any single system or platform, and can be integrated anywhere. It's the full house!
Those products are suites of tools that allow organizations to build their own, in-house, ML solutions. They enable data scientists, data engineers, and analysts to experiment, build and deploy models, and generate predictions. Making effective use of these platforms requires material investment: staffing up a team of experts to make use of the tools, structuring and normalizing data, determining what predictions to make and what business problem to solve with them, and then iterating and experimenting. They are the hammer.
Black Crow AI takes all of that work away, and replaces it with a plug-and-play platform that delivers custom predictions in real time, on every page load, in milliseconds. We handle data normalization and structuring, model training and performance, daily retraining, and more. We provide guidance on how to deploy those predictions to drive real-world benefit, based on our years of experience with over 300 ecommerce partners. Our predictions are untethered to any single system or platform, and can be integrated anywhere. It's the full house!
How much does this cost? What's included in the price?
The price you'll pay is driven by the volume of predictions we deliver. For all but our very largest partners, our annual pricing is substantially less than the cost of a single data scientist.