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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

The TSX Venture Exchange fell 4.83 points to 533.80 Thursday. John-David Belfontaine's first capital pool shell, Conscience Capital Inc. (DGTL: halted), plans to acquire a New York advertising tech firm called Hashoff LLC for the shell's qualifying transaction. The acquisition terms are not yet available. In connection with this QT, the shell plans to raise money by private placement, but there are no financing details yet.

Hashoff is talking up artificial intelligence in connection with advertising. It claims to have developed an AI software program that can scan the Internet and then identify the most popular freelance social media content publishers. These freelance content publishers are so-called "influencers." They have tens of thousands, or millions, of people who follow their social media accounts, and companies pay a lot of money to have them name-drop brands. Influencers include celebrity actors or musicians, but they also include, for example, a female blogger in Oklahoma who posts all about make-up and now has 39.6 million followers on Instagram. There is also an Australian personal trainer who posts all about exercising and dieting, and she now has 11.8 million followers on Instagram. Companies sometimes pay influencers around $10,000 (U.S.) per Instagram post if they have one million followers and up to $250,000 (U.S.) per YouTube video post if they have more. This is why there is now a deluge of teenagers creating and posting videos of themselves, as they review all sorts of products. They start doing that for free, but their dream is to amass millions of followers so that they can make a lot of money from their video reviews later.

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