CDP Institute

If all this customer tracking makes you queasy, you’ll be happy to learn that GumGum just took a $75 million investment for its contextual advertising services.   The investment from Goldman Sachs brings GumGum’s total funding to $134 million.  Imagine how much they could raise if their name wasn’t silly.

Identity data vendor Stirista has launched a new identity graph, OMNA, that is updated with real-time transaction data to track consumers’ devices, locations, and IP addresses.   The data can be appended to a company’s own customer files or used to target advertising.  Stirista’s strength is connected TV and over-the-top TV information.

Retail-focused CDP vendor Bridg has been purchased by Cardlytics, which provides targeted ads within bank loyalty programs.   The announced price was an eyebrow-raising $350 million plus $100 to $300 million based on future performance.  In addition to its CDP, Bridg has a 235 million consumer database that can identify otherwise-anonymous in-store retail buyers.

Microsoft announced a deal to buy speech recognition expert Nuance for $19.7 billion, an impressive 13x revenue and 23% above the closing stock price on Friday.  Microsoft described the deal in terms of expanding its position in the healthcare industry, where Nuance is especially strong.  Marketers will note there are plenty of other applications for what Nuance does.

Bulk text messaging platform Community has raised $40 million from Salesforce Ventures, bringing total funding to $90 million.  Community enables celebrities and organizations to send messages to people who sign up for them.  What makes this special, I do not know.

At least 40% of consumers allowed iPhone apps to track them when presented with Apple’s new opt-in message, according to this AppsFlyer study of 13 million choices. AppsFlyer notes that most observers expected a much higher opt-out rate, but the results really shouldn’t surprise you: most studies show that about one-third of consumers never want to share data, one-third share it freely, and one-third are somewhere in the middle. See this one, for example.

Consumer panels offer coverage that identifiers like Unified ID cannot. That’s what NielsenIQ is offering in its new Omnishopper solution, which the company says offers “omni measurement” to understand consumers’ online and offline “omni-experience” across the “omnichannel” landscape. You won’t be surprised that the company’s goal is to be the “omni authority”. If you think NielsenIQ is part of global measurement company Nielsen Holdings, you’re forgotten that Nielsen sold the business to private equity company Advent International last November, in a deal that just closed last month. If you didn’t... Read More >

Here’s another ID hookup: DSP MediaMath will incorporate Tru Optik’s Data Marketplace of connected TV and other device-based audience segments covering 80 million U.S. households.  The Tru Optik segments are based on behaviors, interests, and demographic data from multiple sources.  You may recall that Tru Optik was purchased by TransUnion last October.

Publicis and The Trade Desk have agreed to connect Publicis-owned Epsilon’s CORE ID customer identity platform with The Trade Desk-run Unified ID.  The deal will improve ad targeting by giving The Trade Desk clients access to the 250 million cross-device “consumer identities” in 125 million U.S. households that Epsilon collects from publishers and transactions.  The Trade Desk will be the exclusive DSP for CORE ID.

Since we’re delivering bad news today, let’s also note that marketers are still struggling with online basics. The Drum found that just 33% of UK businesses provide a personalized Web site and only 27% deliver any type of dynamic content.  Three-quarters identify fewer than 20% of their Web site visitors and 65% struggle with unconnected data sets.  Have a great weekend!

Marketers aren’t doing very well when it comes to understanding their customers, either.  MMA Global and AppsFlyer found marketers overestimate consumers’ concern about controlling their data and underestimate their annoyance that other people make money from it.  More cluelessness: just 16% of marketers think privacy concerns impact consumer behavior, while 44% of consumers say it does.

It’s not your imagination: wrangling marketing data is tough.  Nearly half (43%) of marketers spend more than one week per month assembling information, according to this Salesforce report, and just 31% are “very confident” it’s accurate.  One reason: the average marketer uses 21 different marketing and advertising platforms.  Lots more good stuff here.