CDP Institute

Milan-based CDP Contactlab has been purchased by TeamSystem Group, which offers management systems and services for small businesses and professional firms.  Contactlab is one of several companies included in the $75 million sale by Growens, which also includes MailUp and Acumbamail email service providers.

Amazon’s ad business reached $11.5 billion in the final quarter of 2022, a 19% increase over the previous year.  To put that in perspective, Google’s ad revenue during the same period was $59.1 billion, down 3%, and Meta reported $31.2 billion, down 4%.  In other words: Amazon is still far behind the leaders, but gaining.

Shopify analytics platform Triple Whale announced a $25 million Series B, bringing total funding to $51.7 million.  The system brings together advertising data from multiple sources to give Shopify users a unified view of their ad performance.  Not a CDP but still evidence that marketers need to break down data silos.

I promise we won’t write about every new AI-based content creation tool, Dear Reader. But, hey, when Microsoft announces it is adding one to its Dynamics 365 application suite, that’s worth noting. The new tool, now in preview within Viva Sales, will use Azure OpenAI Service and GPT to help salespeople write emails.

AI-based sales email tools are not a new category. Lavender has been selling one for several years and now claims more than 10,000 users and several big companies as clients. They just raised an $11 million Series A, bringing total funding to $13.2 million.

Does this newsletter shamelessly chase the latest trends in order to boost readership? Not at all: we are very ashamed of ourselves but do it anyway. So here’s yet another Data Clean Room story: Samooha just raised $12.5 million for its data clean product, which is doubly trendy because it runs on Snowflake.

You’re probably heard about IAB CEO David Cohen’s blistering attack on privacy advocates.  Here’s why he cares: 64% of advertisers told Wpromote their campaigns were less successful after Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency, which requires user permission to track their behaviors.  Lots more here on alternatives to third party cookies (Google’s Topics API is leading the horse race), data clean rooms, state privacy regulations, and using CDPs for advertising.

Privacy is just one front in the Big Tech wars.  The U.S. government opened another yesterday with a report charging that Apple and Google use their app stores to stifle competition.  No, it wasn’t written by Jamie from our Department of the Obvious.

The Turing Test for artificial intelligence relied on humans to judge whether they were talking to a computer.  The shoe is now on the other foot, or would be if computers had feet: OpenAI has released a tool that uses AI to judge whether an article was written by a human.  Paging Philip K. Dick.

Is something missing in your life? If it’s news about Data Clean Rooms, we can fix that. LiveRamp and Neustar  have both launched identity resolution solutions for the AWS Clean Rooms service. You’re welcome.

Et tu, HubSpot? One of martech shining stars, Boston-based CRM-and-everything-else platform HubSpot, has followed the latest industry trend by cutting staff. The company announced it yesterday that it is firing 7% of its workforce. That would be about 500 ex-HubSpotters pursuing new opportunities.

Not every tech vendor is cutting back. Customer engagement platform OneSignal announced a new investment from ServiceNow Ventures of undisclosed size. The funding extends OneSignal’s previously-announced $50 million Series C, which brought its total raise to $82 million.