CDP Institute

Netherlands-based retention management platform Retail Rocket just raised a $24 Million Series A, and immediately spent some of it to buy Sailplay, a New York-based marketing automation vendor that will grow its U.S. presence.  Retail Rocket builds unified customer profiles in a module it charmingly calls Data Warehouse, and has other modules for AI-driven personalization, segmentation, and campaign management.  The company has more than 1,000 global clients across Europe and South America.

Voyantis, which calls itself a “prediction-based growth platform” has launched with a machine learning product that uses customer value predictions to optimize advertising campaigns and tailor individual customer treatments.  What’s special is the predictions are updated more or less continuously, enabling quicker reaction to behaviors than usual.  The company also announced it has $19 million in seed funding.  

The data business is infinitely fascinating, amirite?  So you’ll be excited to learn that two firms which track consumer purchases are merging.  NielsenIQ specializes in measuring fast-moving consumer goods, while GfK collects data about consumer durables purchases.  Both are majority-owned by private investment firms, which will retain shares in the combined operation.

Will the metaverse rescue marketers from the loss of third-party cookies and device tracking?  Perhaps you scoff the metaverse doesn’t actually exist.  That didn’t prevent 74% of marketers telling Qualtrics they were already advertising in it and 59% of that group saying it’s their most successful channel.  Pioneering?  Optimistic? Delusional?  Take your pick.

Contextual advertising is a more realistic option to replace cookie-based targeting.  Sadly, this Nielsen study finds that contextual data alone is among the least valuable signals for delivering return on investment, although it does help in combination with other factors.  Their conclusion is based on multi-touch attribution studies, which find that individual-level purchase data and look-alike models work best.

Comcast Advertising took another reality-based approach to media optimization, analyzing more than 20,000 multi-screen TV campaigns to see what’s working.  Their chief conclusion was the budget optimal mix is 20-30% streaming with the rest going to linear TV.  There some other intriguing data about the growth in programmatic and audience-based buying, but they show percentages without base values so it’s tough to assess.