CDP Institute

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute’s Department of the Obvious.  The boss left work suddenly today, muttering something about extradition treaties, so I’m filling in.  Here’s an Integral Ad Science study that used eye tracking technology to find that people viewing content on a topic pay more attention to ads on that topic.  Even more obvious, their purchase intent is higher too.

The headline on this PwC study for Adform isn’t immediately obvious: first-party IDs improve programmatic ad results.  But what the study mostly found is you get more responses when you show ads to more people.  First-party IDs come into play because they let you show ads to people who would otherwise be unreachable in cookieless environments.

This MarTech salary survey finds that marketers’ top activity is building marketing programs, which is about as obvious as it gets.  Nearly as obvious: buying technology is the number one job for marketing ops staff.  There’s also non-obvious content, such as who gets paid more, but that’s not my department so you’ll have to download the report for that information.

Here’s a straw in the wind: Acquia has added a self-service interface to process data deletion requests submitted by consumers under privacy regulations. It’s one more example of CDPs providing privacy-related services. Separately, Acquia announced a Workato integration, which will enable connections through Workato to hundreds of third-party cloud services.

Customer data problems are expected to reduce revenue by more than half (56%) of the marketers surveyed by Forrester for Amperity.  The study found that personalization (81%) and segment targeting (80%) are the top priorities in choosing a data platform, even though marketers recognize they need to build unified profiles before they can do anything else.

“Embedded analytics” might refer to frisky data scientists, but its proper meaning is analytical features built into a product interface. It’s more common than you may have realized (as, perhaps, are frisky data scientists): 55% of respondents to this ThoughtSpot survey say it’s already part of their products. Improved engagement, revenue, and retention were the most-cited benefits.

Inflation-challenged marketers are putting a new stress on efficiency, according to this Merkle report.  They’re eagerly new channels such as retail media networks and connected TV, while prioritizing creative and analytics investments that can optimize performance in all media. And, yes, they’re worried that privacy changes will impact both targeting and measurement.  Download for more interesting insights.

One of our mantras at CDP Institute is that organization, not technology, is the biggest barrier to CDP success.  It turns out that same rule applies to CX: this Ascend2 report for Sharpspring says that misaligned goals were the most-often cited reason for disjointed CX (41%), while siloed data was near the bottom of the list at 18%.  On the other hand, organizations with well-integrated systems were much more likely to deliver a good CX than companies with little integration.

Some investors are still spending money: India-based CRM LeadSquared announced a $153 million Series C, bringing total funding to $188 million.  In an unusually revealing report, the company says it had about $25 million revenue last year and 1,200 employees, yielding $22,000 revenue per employee.  That’s less than one-tenth of HubSpot or Salesforce.  Not good or bad, but interesting.

ActionIQ has repackaged its product as CX Hub, creating separate modules to build profiles (the CDP), create audience segments, manage customer journeys, and support real-time interactions. The three activation modules can work with any data source, not just the ActionIQ CDP. The move puts ActionIQ on more equal footing with marketing cloud vendors who offer similar modules, although delivery systems like email, CRM, and web content management are not an option…yet.

Greenpeace was not impressed, but the ad industry spent much of last week’s Cannes festival talking about helping the planet. One highlight: a huge industry coalition promised to extend the UK-based Ad Net Zero program to other major markets.  Another: media agency GroupM promised to publish a standard approach to measuring carbon impact.

Let’s face it: measuring carbon impact is nowhere near as close to marketers’ hearts as measuring ad results. In one intriguing development, adtech vendor Viant is working to optimize ad campaigns based on attention consumers pay to ads, using attention measurements from Adelaide.   In another, TV ad server Innovid has launched InnovidXP, which simultaneously measures ad results and creative performance across both linear and connected TV.