CDP Institute

Digital events are here to stay, Dear Reader. B2B event producer Emerald found in-person events will increase in 2022 but not reach the 2019 level.   Livestreams, online access to sessions, and even live chats with vendors top the most-wanted features list; podcasts and resource libraries are at the bottom.  In other words, people want more interaction without leaving their desk, couch, beach chair, or whatever.

On the other hand, this IDG study finds that tech buyers actually use content sites and white papers more than any other information source, while conferences and virtual events rank tenth out of ten. Scariest figure was there are 27 people on the average enterprise buying team. Recalls the old joke: Q: How many people work here?  A: About half.

More on B2B events: results have always been hard to measure, and the move to virtual events makes it even harder.  The good folks at audience measurement non-profit BPA Worldwide are trying to help with a new set of standards for reporting on event results.   Can’t hurt.

Is there anything more fascinating than other companies’ customer data strategies, Dear Reader?  I thought not.  Here’s a Treasure Data study on that very topic.  Random factoids: data silos are a more common problem (34%) than data quality (24%); data and IT departments are responsible for customer data strategy at 49% of companies, while marketing is responsible at 11%.; 63% of companies plan to expand use of customer data.

Simon Data’s 2022 State of Customer Data offers more to chew on.  They report their clients are using almost twice as many data points now as one year ago and that campaigns using more data are more successful.  They do caution that using too much data is a problem if you’re being creepy.

Software AG found that 78% of organizations have released more incomplete software projects since the pandemic began.  Respondents said that’s a good thing because it lets them deliver new systems more quickly.  Need I mention that the respondents were people who build systems, not people who use them?

It’s a slow news day, Dear Reader, so if you’re looking to fill some time, here’s a 300 page compendium of information about the digital universe.   Everything from ad market share to online food delivery to internet connection speeds by country.  Or you can play Wordle.

Jebbit lets people build interactive quizzes, surveys, lead generation forms and such.  They just received $70 million from Vista Equity Partners, which is noteworthy.  But I’m more intrigued that they position themselves a “zero-party data platform”, rather than a development tool.

Cloud data warehouse vendor Firebolt announced a $100 million Series C, just six months after a $127 million round last June.  Firebolt competes with Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery in a super-hot segment that’s increasingly relevant to CDPs.

Google has given up on its FLoC cookie-less targeting initiative, which faced insurmountable privacy objections. The replacement, which mercifully does not reference anything bird-related, is Topics API, which will offer three recent interests for each individual based on sites they have recently visited.  The loss in targeting and tracking power is so huge that you wonder if Google is purposely showing what tighter privacy is costing the industry. Or maybe they’re just kneecapping competitors.

When all the cookie dust has settled, contextual targeting may be the only way to reach mass audiences.  So let’s note that Precise TV, a “kid-safe contextual advertising platform for YouTube”, has extended its reach to connected TV through a deal with video content classification vendor IRIS.TV.  Back in the day, all TV ad buys were fundamentally contextual, but that was when media buyers chose from, like, five channels.

Email offers precise targeting without cookies but anti-spam laws make it hard to reach new customers.  Portugal-based Emailbidding somehow gets around that problem with a service that lets advertisers bid on emails to external lists.  They were just bought by Berlin-based Audience Serv, which also sells email prospecting campaigns but apparently without the fancy bidding mechanism.