CDP Institute

Did someone mention replacing third-party cookies? Advertiser Perceptions found that companies are most likely to look for identity solutions based on first -party data (65%), compared with second-party data (51%) and third-party data (31%). A touchingly optimistic 58% expected that the industry would work together to create a universal identifier to replace third-party cookies.

If you’re less confident than most that the ad industry will agree on a universal ID, bear in mind that just 14% of ad professionals told ID Comms that advertisers have a good understanding of how adtech platforms contribute value. Only 31% believe advertisers are using adtech effectively. Of course, they were describing the industry in general and not their personal level of understanding, which most would probably rate much higher.

If you have some spare empathy today, consider the plight of IT leaders. This Snow Software survey found their top three priorities – all tied at 38% — are the conflicting goals of adopting new technologies, reducing security risks, and cutting costs. Users also reported they feel more sympathy for IT leaders and 41% said their access to technology has improved in the past year.

Audio streaming service Spotify has acquired Megaphone, which inserts ads into podcasts. Spotify could do that already but Megaphone offers more precise audience data, enabling more precise targeting. Price was $235 million.

Open source integration toolkit Rudderstack calls itself a Customer Data Platform, but they don’t meet the fundamental requirement of maintaining a persistent data store. What they do offer are tools for developers to move data between systems. If you’re looking for that, you can now try a free SaaS implementation for up to 500,000 events per month on Rudderstack servers.

Dynamic Yield has released “No Consent, No Cookies”, a solution that blocks user activity tracking without relying on cookies. This avoids the problem of using cookies to track whether consumers have consented to cookies being used. Don’t think about it too hard or your head may explode.

Your head may also explode if you try to understand why consumer photo app Snap would buy Voca.ai, which creates AI-based voice assistants for customer support. And yet, they have. Life is filled with mysteries, eh?

And here’s one more puzzle: a majority of consumers in this Mitel survey reported that customer experience has actually improved during the pandemic. The figure was 60% globally and 71% in the U.S. Don’t tell the folks at Snap that chatbots and virtual agents are consumers’ least favorite support channels.

Of course, when it comes to misalignment, nothing beats the marketing-IT relationship. This Infosys study finds that marketers see the biggest collaboration challenges as improving customer experience and agility while IT managers focus more on skills, company culture, and budgets. There’s a lot more here but the bottom line is companies with better collaboration get better results.

Whether marketers really want broad scope suites is questionable: recent surveys from Merkle and Gartner suggest not. This TrustRadius study shows that marketers often misunderstand what buyers really want, overprioritizing chatbots, digital events, and case studies, and undervaluing reviews and free trials. Of course, what people say and what they do are not always the same, either. Are you confused yet?

Account Based Marketing vendor Demandbase has integrated its Engagio acquisition to create Demandbase One. Demandbase worked primarily with second and third party data for advertising and Web site personalization, while Engagio worked with first party data for email and orchestration. Scope expansion is all the rage among ABM vendors: you’ll recall that Terminus bought GrowFlare earlier this week and ZoomInfo bought EverString the week before.

European tech regulators have been more aggressive. Their latest act is a formal accusation by the European Commission that Amazon improperly used third-party merchant data on its platform to benefit Amazon’s own business. The Commission also announced a second probe into preferential treatment for Amazon’s own products and merchants who use Amazon fulfillment services.