CDP Institute

I tried to take a couple of days off from talking about cookies, but the News Gods insist.  First they sent this admission from Facebook that Apple’s tighter privacy policies have made ad targeting and tracking more difficult, resulting in under-counted iOS web conversions by about 15%.  They don’t quite admit that their targeting itself is probably less effective, but that’s also likely.

Next, CDP ActionIQ launched an “Advertiser CDP Solution” that combines a data collection tag, integration with third-party identifiers, prebuilt audience lookalike models for ad targeting, and integrations with ad buying platforms.  If you think they’re trying to elbow DMP vendors out of the picture, you’re probably right.

Finally, we have Shopify helping its clients adjust by integrating Yahoo’s cookie-free  Connect ID for ad targeting.  The deal will let Shopify merchants target (and retarget) ads at individuals across the 3,000-plus publisher domains that support Yahoo’s Connect ID.

More than half (59%) of the respondents to this Treasure Data martech survey are in IT, which probably explains why they rated security as the most important evaluation consideration (58%), far ahead of cost (38%), scalability (38%), or integration (37%). The group ranked CDP as the top marketing stack technology (68%), although the list of choices didn’t include stalwarts such as email, marketing automation, or CRM. Download for more.

In the on-going plague that is Facebook, I could mention The New York Times’ report that they are pushing their own propaganda through the News Feed or that the ad industry proposes to “combat” social media hate speech without cutting off the ad spending that funds it. But let’s instead offer a ray of hope: Blackbird.ai has raised $10 million for its platform to quickly detect and respond to social media disinformation campaigns.

Staying positive, let’s look at alternatives to Big Tech-based online media. One growing channel is retailer-based media networks, which Catalina is nurturing with a bundle of products and services that make them easier for retailers to deploy. Anther is the audio advertising, which iHeartMedia subsidiary Triton Digital is supporting with a marketplace, due early next year, that will aggregate 100 billion monthly impressions across broadcast radio, podcast, and streaming audio.

We have lots to discuss today, Dear Reader.  First, digital experience platform Optimizely (bought last year by Episerver, which then took its name) has launched a new set of unified insights and data services to meld its collection of acquired products.  The data foundation is the Zaius CDP, which Optimizely bought this past March.

Next, a particularly interesting survey from Acxiom about identity solutions.  Just 19% of respondents said their companies have implemented a third-party cookie replacement plan and only 34% have a plan in place.  Even fewer have mature plans for master identities across martech and adtech.  First party data and CDPs are the most important components of their expected solutions.  Lots more here.

Finally, let’s pay some rare attention to small business marketers. Roku has launched an app that lets merchants buy streaming TV ads through Shopify.  UZE has created a self-service platform that lets small advertisers place ads on vehicle-mounted digital displays across Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria. And all-in-one digital marketing platform Sendinblue has become aller-in-one and indulged its fetish for odd company names by purchasing Chatra (messaging), Metrilo (ecommerce analytics), and PushOwl (web push).

Holy Grail or Great White Whale?  Either way, lots of people are chasing fully automated marketing campaigns.  Oracle just joined the quest with Fusion Marketing, which automates some functions and guides marketers through manual steps for others.  The most automated bits include B2B advertising audience generation, reference story selection, company-specific microsites with auto-selected case histories, and AI-powered lead qualification and distribution.

Adobe is also pressing for increased automation, and just proudly announced that over 80% of Experience Cloud customers are using at least one AI-powered feature.  Huzzah.  The latest additions to their AI menagerie are automated marketing mix modeling and marketing spend optimization based on estimates of the incremental impact of specific marketing touchpoints.

Our friends at D4t4 Solutions have their own automation news: they’ve added nearly 100 new preconfigured marketing signals to their Celebrus CDP. The new signals will combine behaviors with historical data to flag customers most likely to convert.  They’re tailored to travel and hospitality, telecommunications, and healthcare industries.  Celebrus already had similar signals for banking and insurance.