CDP Institute

Tighter budgets are slowing progress towards data unification and leading to poor vendor selection decisions, according to the CDP Institute’s latest member survey. The share of respondents reporting a CDP or other type of unified customer database fell compared with previous surveys, the first time that ever happened. More companies are prioritizing cost over features in their vendor selection projects, even though companies that select based on cost show less satisfaction with their martech results.

A consortium of major European telcos has launched a consent-based digital identity service that will let consumers decide which companies can see their data. The new joint venture, named Utiq, includes Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone and has been pre-cleared by the European Commission. CDP vendor Teavaro will provide technology and service delivery.

Here’s another skirmish in the on-going battle over AI systems’ use of published data. News/Media Alliance, a publishing industry trade group, has issued guidelines it would like AI developers to follow when they use someone else’s intellectual property. As you might imagine, it’s a bit of a wish list for approaches that would favor copyright owners.

Copyright issues are scaring off potential users of generative AI as it becomes clear how much training data was taken without permission.  Microsoft has now promised to defend its customers from copyright claims related to its AI “copilots” and to pay any fines if they lose.  Adobe made a similar but more limited promise in June.  Other gen AI developers will probably follow suit.

In addition to using data it shouldn’t, gen AI has problems with making up data that doesn’t exist.  Gleen AI just launched with a promise to reduce that problem by checking AI outputs against an enterprise’s own data, which is presumably accurate.  They have $4.9 million in funding.

Retail media networks and digital out of home advertising (DOOH) are definitely related although they’re often discussed separately.  Vistar Media, a programmatic DOOH vendor, has merged the two with a solution that reaches 25,000 retailer screens using its DOOH-tech.  Buyers can select a variety of retail inventory packages linked to different locations.

Customer engagement platform Braze has introduced an expanded set of data integration features, enabling easier data ingestion, identity management, and live connections with cloud databases including Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Databricks and Snowflake.  We haven’t formally assessed whether Braze qualifies as a CDP but it’s beginning to look they tick most or all of the boxes.

There’s no reason to think that HubSpot is a CDP, but they are certainly a major CRM vendor.  So we should probably mention that they’ve added a bushel of AI tools to generate content, support (or replace) customer service agents, and offer predictive insights.  They also have a public beta of their very own generative AI chatbot, currently with 80,000 total users.

Software subscriptions have accelerated martech growth because they make it easier to buy software than conventional licenses.  But CIOs are less enthusiastic about the subscription model.  This survey from Rimini Street found 99% of CIOs and CTO had concerns about subscription licenses, with the top ones being no return on investment and vendor lock-in.