CDP Institute

Industry-specific CDPs are one of the trends we’re tracking.  Informatica just added another to the list with its Intelligent Data Management Cloud for Retail.  It includes unified customer profiles to enable personalized digital shopping experiences, support for privacy compliance including customer data access requests , and help with operational chores including supplier and inventory management.

Retail media is another favorite topic around here (we’re VERY popular at parties).  Instacart just launched Instacart Platform, which includes Carrot Ads, which run on retail websites that use Instacart technology; Carrot Warehouses fulfillment services, and Carrot Insights for analytics.  Kudos to Instacart for addressing the long-ignored shortage of vegetable-themed martech.

No topic inspires as much discussion as cookieless advertising.  NBCUniversal added to the chatter with news about its One Platform, which includes a proprietary ID graph of 150 million individuals.  The latest developments let advertisers append external data to the NBCU ID.  Other news includes a partnership with Salesforce and Mediaocean to automate programmatic TV buying workflows, use of contextual signals to personalize ad creative, and certification of new measurement partners that are not Nielsen.

Data movement platform RudderStack has announced an integration to easily move data in and out of cross-channel marketing platform Iterable.  Rudderstack calls itself a “warehouse-first, CDP built for developers”, although it doesn’t meet the CDP Institute definition because it doesn’t maintain customer profiles.  It does provide one of the tools that companies can combine to mimic CDP functionality.

API connections are another way that companies can patch together something resembling a CDP (or do a lot of other, non-CDP things).  RapidAPI has made a business of helping companies to find, manage, and build APIs.  They just raised a $150 million Series D, having grown to more than four million users since they were founded in 2015.

Devs wanna dev, but business users have other priorities.  Almost three quarters (72%) of the in-store retail decision makers queried by Forrester for CX solution vendor Uberall said they’d favor a platform that unified separate point solutions to address marketing and CX needs.  Similar numbers felt their company did a less-than-good job of providing seamless customer journeys across all touchpoints.

Google Cloud has expanded its Contact Center AI service into its Contact Center AI Platform, which it calls an “out-of-box, end-to-end solution for the contact center”.   The technology integrates with existing CRM software to add call guidance, virtual agents, unified customer profiles, call routing, and workforce scheduling.  Think of it as a brain transplant that leaves the shell of your current contact center in place but replaces all its intelligence with Google.

Identity resolution vendor Neustar has partnered with cohort-based audience platform Permutive.  The deal will let advertisers use the Neustar Fabrick platform to analyze publisher cohort members and then select which cohorts to target through Permutive.   Advertisers get more information than if they just bought the cohorts alone, while publishers avoid exposing individual-level information.

Retail data analytics vendor NielsenIQ has acquired ciValue, which powers retail loyalty programs.  The deal will expand NielsenIQ’s abililty to execute personalized customer marketing programs.  Yes, there’s a trend to combine analytics and execution.  No, NielsenIQ isn’t the same company as Nielsen, the media measurement giant.

It’s one of those rare days when we have three items featuring CDP vendors, Dear Reader. First, here’s news that Treasure Data has signed a partnership with Sinch, which offers email, text, phone, and mobile chat communications services.  Treasure Data will give disconnected Sinch products access to a unified customer view.

Simon Data has expanded its already-deep relationship with Snowflake by joining the “Powered by Snowflake” program.  The deal will raise Simon’s visibility in the Snowflake community and provide additional technical support for Simon’s Snowflake-powered CDP.  There are only about forty companies listed in the “Powered by Snowflake” directory, including the Zeta Global CDP.

Speaking of Zeta, they just bought ArcaMax, which publishes free consumer newsletters.  Subscriber data will be used to extend Zeta’s identity graph and consumer intent data collection.  Zeta bought Apptness, a digital survey platform, for similar reasons last October.