CDP Institute

Customer engagement platform MessageGears has purchased Swrve, a mobile app marketing platform.  No word on plans to integrate the products.  Unlike many customer engagement platforms and all CDPs, MessageGears relies on external data warehouses to manage customer data.

Wrap your head around this one, Dear Reader: Walmart is joining the Salesforce AppExchange.  It’s not quite as odd as it sounds, since they’re making  Walmart’s in-store pickup and local delivery services available to merchants using Salesforce software.  Salesforce also had a basket of other retail announcements yesterday, including an Azure data storage connector for its CDP.

“What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable” pretty much sums up Amazon’s attitude towards other retailers.  Their latest move is to expand the Buy with Prime program from its invite-only pilot, launched in April, to full U.S. availability by the end of this month.  Buy with Prime offers Amazon Prime benefits to buyers on merchants’ own sites.   Merchant sites will also be able to display Amazon product reviews.

Two CDP surveys in one week, Dear Reader!  How great is that?  This one’s from Treasure Data, which reports the average company recoups its investment after eight months.  Lots here about features, benefits, data sources, and use cases, with nearly half the companies citing applications beyond marketing.

This Emplifi survey of social marketing leaders isn’t focused on CDPs, although it does find that 58% of respondents have one in place and another 31% are planning to invest.  That’s a good thing, since creating a single customer view is the most common marketing strategy challenge (45%), beating out unrealistic expectations for what marketing can do (42%), lack of content (36%), and inadequate marketing technologies (36%).

It’s pretty clear that stories about AI-written content won’t be newsworthy for much longer.  But it’s still worth noting the next phase, which is systems that embed AI-authors directly within their workflows.  So here’s customer success platform ChurnZero, which has just released a test version of its system to let AI write emails, call scripts, or story suggestions based on a few words of instruction.

It seems like just yesterday that retail media was a cute little toddler looking for its place in the world.  Now we have no less than Microsoft offering a very grown up retail media platform based on its PromoteIQ acquisition.  Latest additions make it easier to place ads on a retailer’s own site, on other sites using retailer first-party data, and on in-store displays.  Release dates vary.

In-game ads are a candidate for Next Big Channel after retail media.  I think gamers’ minds are elsewhere but this Integral Ad Science survey finds 69% of gamers are open to non-disruptive in-game ads, especially if they’re relevant to the game.  They also warn that 44% will avoid brands that advertise near inappropriate content, something IAS sells tools to prevent.

ChatGPT is the Next Biggest Thing of all right now.  This newsletter hasn’t had many excuses to write about it, but we wouldn’t want you to think we’re not paying attention.  So let’s mention that Microsoft may invest $10 billion in ChatGPT owner OpenAI, and then embed ChatGPT in all kinds of products.

Nothing brightens the day like a nice CDP industry survey, eh, Dear Reader?  Our friends at Tealium have provided just that, with lots of good news about CDP value (74% show positive ROI within one year of deployment; companies with established CDPs are twice as likely to meet marketing objectives as those without).  Plenty more detail about use cases, features, performance, team size, and management.

TV programmers have long chafed at the power of Nielsen audience ratings.  Five of the biggest, including Comcast NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, and TelevisaUnivision, along with anti-Nielsen gadfly VAB, have created a Joint Industry Committee to certify alternative measurement currencies against standards the committee defines.  They will rely on the shared viewer IDs created by the OpenAP consortium, which is run by many of the same companies.

Remember when all the cool kids were migrating to the cloud-based services?  That’s so 2022.  Location data vendor HERE Technologies is now proudly touting on-premises implementation, citing better privacy, security, and control.  Rev up the DeLorean, Doc!