CDP Institute

Google has announced a first-party data management tool, Google Ads Data Manager, for release early next year.  The system will connect data from multiple sources, including CDPs and cloud data warehouses, and make the results available to create advertising audiences and measure advertising results.  Not quite a CDP but you could mistake it for one in a dark room.

Prophecy offers a no-code data transformation platform, using a visual interface to generate transformation code.   They just raised a $35 million Series B, bringing total funding to $67 million.   In what could be a sign of genAI-fatigue, the press release doesn’t mention AI although the company website does list AI-based tools.

Aampe describes itself as “the AI-native user engagement platform,” so they clearly think AI is still cool.  The system combines real-time tracking of user behavior with automated testing of message attributes to generate personalized app content for each individual and adjust the content after every user action.  They just raised $7.5 million in Pre-Series A funding, bringing their total to $9.3 million.

One factor slowing adoption of generative AI is the challenge of knowing whether it was used to produce any particular piece of content.  Adobe is backing an open standard to tag AI-generated materials with details about their origins and changes.  It just announced adoption by partners including Microsoft, Leica, Nikon, Publicis, and others.  There’s an online Content Credentials hub where consumers and creators can verify content; it’s consistent with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authority (C2PA) standard.

Zeta Global announced a bevy of product enhancements at its recent annual conference. New and enhanced features include its data clean room, data governance controls, enhanced connectivity management, AI-generated solutions to marketing problems, enhanced forecasting and predictions, marketing mix models, and improved media activation and attribution.  As always, Zeta is particularly proud that it can provide its own data to supplement a client’s own sources.

App marketing platform InMobi has launched Addressability Gradient, which helps advertisers pick the right customer identity option for each different.  I couldn’t find any details but the idea seems to be a toolkit of techniques ranging from ID-based targeting to, um, non-ID-based targeting.  Presumably it reduces confusion rather than increasing it.

Serious adoption – as opposed to testing – of generative AI is still relatively rare, but the leaders are showing good results.  This according to a Deliotte Digital study, which finds 26% of surveyed marketers are using genAI for content creation, and those early adopters report higher-quality content (60%), higher employee productivity (57%), and more content produced (57%).  The average return rate on genAI investment is 12%.

Brand suitability – a fancy term for making sure your ads don’t run near inappropriate content – is a hot topic among advertisers as objectionable materials become ever-more-common on social media.  Zefr, which uses AI to identify unsuitable content, has just announced that its solution will be available to monitor ad placements on Facebook and Instagram Reels.  Zefr’s reporting conforms with standards set up by the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

Brand suitability is less of a concern with Connected TV (CTV) ads, since most of the content is provided by networks and streaming providers.  But campaign optimization is harder because audience data isn’t easily available.  Innovid, which offers a CTV ad platform, has combined its real-time measurement with its ad serving capabilities, enabling marketers to automatically optimize campaigns as they run.

The (South) Korea Communications Commission has warned Google and Apple that they face up to $50 million in fines for forcing app developers to use specific payment systems. The possible fines of $35.2 million for Google and $15.2 million for Apple are insignificant to both companies, but it’s still a reminder that regulators around the globe are no longer letting Big Tech do as it pleases.

There’s little surprising in this digital experience (DX) survey from FullStory B2B, but familiar tales can be worth remembering.  The main plot points are: consumers are frustrated by poor website performance (72%); DX managers say insights are vital to improving loyalty (84%) and most have a clear DX strategy (73%), yet just 43% have a clear view of customer preferences.  The villain is poor data: just 24% have a single source of DX truth.

Tech marketing agency Alloy tells a similar story: 62% of survey respondents have made business decisions based on marketing performance data in the past year, but 84% say insights are available only to some teams within their organization.  While they cite “silos” as the main culprit, they are including organizational as well as technical fragmentation.