CDP Institute

Tealium is making it easier for clients to insert custom Javascript operations within their processing flows.  The new feature, called Functions, gives users a canvas to hold Javascript code that accesses Tealium connectors and data.   The initial version will move data and access destination APIs; later versions will add data transformations within Tealium itself.

Catalina and Verizon Media are matching their identity graphs, making it possible for marketers to advertise to Verizon audiences and then see Catalina’s data on what audience members actually buy at retail.  Verizon Media has data on 148 million people while Catalina tracks 103 million U.S. households.  It’s all cookie-free.

Shopify is reducing the share of revenue it takes from app developers on its marketplace.  The move follows similar reductions by Apple, Google, and Amazon, who are all under anti-trust pressure that takes high app marketplace fees are prime evidence of monopoly positions.  Shopify’s particular change is to cut it’s current 20% fee to zero for developers who earn less than $1 million per year on its App Store and Theme Store.

It’s kindof a big deal, but you’ve probably already heard that a federal judge has delayed, and perhaps killed, the big federal and state anti-trust suit against Facebook.  So I’ll report instead that Sprout Social is doing its bit to advance the cause of social commerce by integrating with Shopify and Facebook Shops. Sprout Social users will have easy access to customers’ purchase history while interacting with them through social channels.

Unified commerce platform Kibo also has new integrations, although they’re with the Monetate and Certona personalization systems that Kibo already owns. The spawn includes personalized site search, personalized category pages, and predictive visual search. By happy coincidence, I also have this Lucidworks study showing that 78% of shoppers interact with product recommends and 62% often make unplanned purchases based on them.

Here’s an intriguing announcement from digital audio adtech vendor AdsWizz, offering an attribution system that connects audio ads with purchases in other channels.  They embed a tracking pixel in websites to capture consumer behaviors and somehow connect the “digital breadcrumbs” to figure out which behaviors are the result of the audio campaigns.  Exactly how they do this, they do not say.

Zeta Global and Dun & Bradstreet are combining their data to enable business marketers to target business contacts based on consumer data including purchase intent, behaviors, transactions, and location.   Audiences combining D&B business information with Zeta Global consumer data will be sold by both companies, with a special focus on giving small businesses easy access to advanced marketing capabilities.

Business software information company G2 has raised a $157 million Series D, bringing total funding to $257 million and valuation to $1.1 billion.  While best known for its crowd-sourced reviews, the company also helps companies buy and manage their software and offers marketing solutions to software sellers.

Not every business information story has a happy ending.  Crowd-sourced company data collector Owler was just bought by media-monitoring firm Meltwater for $24.5 million in cash and equity.  Owler had raised $30.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

I know you’ve already heard the news, but still feel obligated to report that Google has announced it will support third-party cookies in Chrome until the end of 2023, more than a year longer than expected.  They nobly cite concern for “the business models of many web publishers” but protecting their own revenue and data-gathering seems a more plausible motivation.  They’re also grounding FLoC, their much-criticized cohort-based targeting alternative, until further notice.

Small business marketing platform Constant Contact is buying marketing automation and CRM vendor Sharpspring for $240 million, or about 8x revenue. The deal will further expand Constant Contact’s offerings, which already include email, ecommerce, websites, and social media advertising. Sharpspring has specialized in selling through small marketing agencies.

Stockholm-based CDP Data Talks has raised $1.4 million for its first round of venture funding.  It may not seem like much but remember that Sweden is a small country and it’s more impressive if you describe it as 11.5 million Krona.