[jayvanguard]

Thanks for the insight. I've seen similar patterns in areas such as recommendation systems. There are active research communities but really all of the detail work and pushing the envelope happens in private companies.

The financial incentives drive the pace. In the future I'm sure it will become more commoditized but right now the practical nature of integrating with large shopping, coupon, and marketing systems and scaling for millions of users place the progress mostly in the domain of industry not academy.