While many big retailers, consumer-packaged-goods companies, and logistics companies initially expressed great interest in RFID technologies, their immediate concern was how in the world would they ever be able to manage the unprecedently massive streams of data emanating from these new networks of things.

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The same thing is true when you look at a consumer packaged-goods company.

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But the traffic stayed at YouTube, and Madison Avenue has pretty much stayed on the sidelines, leaving YouTube unable to break into the big-time revenues of consumer packaged goods.

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The company was still exploring business models, but knew that collecting and combining data about what, when and where their users were eating could offer invaluable insights to anyone from consumer packaged goods companies (CPG) to mom-and-pop restaurants, CEO Justin Massa told me in an interview last year.

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The company will continue to try to wrench gains from a consumer goods business that includes K-cups, Via instant coffee packs and packaged coffee, which are infiltrating supermarkets across the U.S. and internationally.

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In April this year, it introduced its instant-coffee packets in China and expanded beyond coffee stores to sell consumer packaged goods in the region.

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Gladson maintains the largest, up-to-date database in the U.S. of product information on consumer packaged goods.

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While many start-ups have focused on advertising (think Admob), promotions, particularly from large consumer packaged goods companies, are an overloooked sector, Wong says.

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