CDP Institute

LiveRamp, the data onboarding and identity resolution platform, has announced that it will acquire Habu, a data clean room software company with an international market. Habu will help existing LiveRamp customers share and resolve customer data in a privacy-compliant way. Will we see more acquisitions of DCRs by broader data platform?

DoubleVerify, the solution that safeguards brand safety in the digital advertising eco-system, is expanding its offering to Facebook Feed and Instagram Reels. DoubleVerify uses a classification system to screen content adjacent to ads for safety and suitability. It also offers authentication metrics on Meta media buys, addressing fraud issues and viewability.

For the first time, Apple is allowing developers to use outside payment systems in their apps. The freedom is welcome, the cost is not: Apple will charge a 27% fee. This will be in addition to any fees charged by the third-party payment processor. There will be a reduced commission of 12% for participants in the Small Business Program or for certain automatic renewals.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has announced the February launch of a working group to educate brands and agencies on opportunities for out-of-home and in-store retail media advertising. This follows the release of an IAB report, “Quantifying Retail Media In-Store Success: Measurement & Innovation” that discusses physical stores as the next major media channel. For example, Walmart’s potential in-store audience is almost double its digital audience.

Just over 50% of CEOs now believe that the short tenure of a CMO can be an indication of their success as they move on to other opportunities. Ninety-one percent of CEOs believe CMOs build trust across the C-Suite, although they lag behind CFOs and COOs when it comes to CEOs’ personal trust. CEOs’ assessment of CMOs across a range of factors has become more positive, according to the latest CEO study from AI marketing agency Boathouse.

No fewer than 98% of those surveyed by creative operations platform Lytho say they use or plan to use AI in their work. Fifty percent are using it weekly; 30% daily. Notably creatives were more interested in specific features and ease of use than marketers, marketers marginally more interested in cost-effectiveness than creatives.

Salesforce debuted new AI-powered tools for retail marketers at NRF this week. They include segment creation in Data Cloud driven by natural language prompts, prompt-driven content creation (email subject lines and body copy plus visual content) and predictive insights into potential promotion revenue. Also launched, Einstein CoPilot for Shoppers, a tool to conduct real-time conversations on retailer channels such as messaging apps.

Sports tech company Sportradar, a partner of organizations including the NBA and NHL, has launched FanID which draws on a range of first-party data sources to create anonymous but marketable fan profiles. The data will come from rights holders, commercial partners, and media companies. Sportradar’s own marketing activation tech will create multi-channel campaigns based on these profiles.

One third of CTV users have made purchases directly on their TV according to “The Shoppable TV Report: 2024 and Beyond” from LG Ad Solutions. Seventy-one percent always have their phone in their hand while watching TV; the same percentage have seen a QR Code and almost 50% have scanned one. Strong figures for the early days of a new purchasing channel.

CDP industry employment rose just 2% in the second half of 2023, the smallest rise on record, according to the CDP Institute’s semi-annual Industry Update. But averages can mislead: employment rose by 10% or more at 20% of the firms listed.  The ten vendors added to the report were mostly CDP-specialist start-ups; by contrast, many new firms in previous reports were larger, older companies that were adding CDP features to existing campaign and delivery capabilities.

Pretty much every business software vendor has added some flavor of generative AI-based assistance to its interface, and Snapchat reports seven million users pay $3.99 per month for gen-AI in Snapchat+.  But Microsoft has taken it up a notch by charging $20 per month for “Copilot Pro”, which expands gen-AI in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote, and a $30 per month “Copilot for Microsoft 365” for businesses.  You can just see the dollar signs dancing in their eyes.

CDP Meiro has closed a $3 million Pre-Series A round.  It’s their first external funding.  Meiro will use the money to accelerate product development and to enter new markets.