CDP Institute

This Ascend2 survey for Oracle has lots of interesting information, but also some puzzles.  For example: CDPs rank first on the list of planned martech investments (37%) but data silos data and poor integration fall last on the list of challenges.  Or consider this:  82% say they want to change some stack components to improve performance while 88% say they already have access to appropriate data for marketing decisions.

Data connectivity vendor Kong surveyed tech staff, not marketers. That group ranked poor integration, in the form of multiple technologies, as the top obstacle to innovation. In fact, even though 75% fear competitive failure if they don’t innovate, the group rated security, performance, and reliability as more important than innovating quickly. On the other hand, they’re all-in on microservices, with more than half running at least 50 and 86% seeing them as “the future”.

Kustomer spoke with CX professionals, who predictably believe that customer service will become more important in the next three years. They sided with IT in citing scattered data as their organizations’ biggest weakness, with insufficiently personalized experience ranked second. But when it came to actual priorities, reducing wait times was number one at 81%, while increased personalization finished fifth at 66%.

CDP Optimove has continued to expand its integrated delivery capabilities by buying mobile messaging platform Kumulos.  The deal adds push notifications, in-app and web messages and geofencing.  Optimove added email delivery with its PowerInBox acquisition in 2018.

Just one day after announcing its Retail Data Cloud, Snowflake extended its reach with a deal to that makes it easier for Amazon sellers use to use Amazon purchase data for demand forecasting. There’s no customer-level data involved, but it’s one more data set that Snowflake users can access through the Amazon Data Marketplace. Amazon also announced a separate deal to connect the Retail Data Cloud with Blue Yonder’s retail supply chain system.

Beleaguered media measurement giant Nielsen Holdings has agreed to be bought by a private equity consortium, in a deal valued at $16 billion.  Nielsen had previously rejected a $9 billion offer from some of the same investors.  Nielsen has been a public company since 2011.

Who says time travel is impossible?  We have nothing new today, Dear Reader, so we’re transporting you back to March 23, 2022, when data orchestration platform Astronomer announced a $213 million Series C, bringing total funding to $283 million.   You’ve grown to care about data tech, right?

Are you enjoying March 23, time traveler?  Domo today released a study about the “data decision gap”, finding that the biggest challenges to using data are implementation complexity (28%) and lack of integration (24%).   We find that interesting now but I’ll bet it’s common knowledge in the future.

This study is already old news, since it was released yesterday, March 22. Analytics platform Starburst reports the average organization has four to six data platforms and the number is growing as they shift to more decentralized architectures. Half report they can build a new data pipeline in under 24 hours, although Starburst implies that’s too long to wait. How long does it take when you live?

Ah, first-party data.  Everybody loves you.  That’s why programmatic adtech company TripleLift just spent a reported $150 million to purchase 1plusX, which enriches publisher first-party to create enhanced audience profiles.  TripeLift itself was bought one year ago by Vista Equity Partners.

First-party data is also the punchline of this Advertiser Perceptions study on cross-screen video advertising, for Pubmatic.  Most (54%) of the publishers they surveyed said that advertisers care more about targeting audiences across screens than targeting on specific screens.  First-party data is what lets that happen.  Related: just 28% of programmatic ads are bought on the open market; others go through private marketplaces or negotiated deals, where more data is available.

OTT (Over-The-Top) TV, which refers to video delivered outside of cable or satellite networks, targets ads with first-party data owned by the service provider.  This Pathmatics report finds it accounted for 13% of total digital ad spending in recent months and reaches 72% of U.S. households.  Fun fact: the average consumer watches video on three devices (not necessarily all at once).