Amazon points to human error for the disruption in its cloud services resulting in widespread outages and glitches for Internet-connected devices from companies like Nest, as well as advertisers, news sites, and government services. But with millions -- if not a billion -- of business dollars dependent on AWS, doesn't it make sense to have automated checks and balances?

Local, mobile and logged-in location-based advertising that leverages 8 terabytes of data monthly to connect buyers and sellers seems like a lofty goal for any company -- especially one that doesn't yet rely on artificial intelligence or machine learning. Not for Jared Rowe, who took the helm as CEO of YP.com in August 2016.

One in five respondents of a study released Wednesday believe their organization does not do enough in-person research to understand its audiences, and only 32% are extremely confident that their data reporting leads to a greater understanding of their users.