CDP Institute

It was fun while it lasted, but AI vendors can no longer scrape training data from the internet without paying for it.  Bowing to the inevitable, OpenAI continues to rack up partnerships with premium publishers. Following last week’s deal with NewsCorp, it has now added Vox Media (New York, The Verge, Eater) and The Atlantic magazine.

YouTube never hid that its “free” service was really “free if you watch our advertising”.  But they’ve gotten increasingly aggressive at enforcing the bargain.  First they slowed load times for users who block ads and now (users say) ad-blocked videos skip immediately to the end.

If it seems petty for YouTube to ad block users, consider this: The Trade Desk reports that YouTube-parent Google and Facebook captured less than 47% of digital ad spend in 2023, compared with over 53% in 2019.  The change reflects a shift in consumer time from walled gardens (62% in 2014 vs. 39% in 2023), to “open internet” alternatives including connected TV, streaming music, and podcasts (38% in 2014 vs. 61% in 2023).

CDP Tealium has announced that it is now offering customers seamless integration with EUID, an identity solution for the European market that is open source but was pioneered by The Trade Desk. Tealium already offers integration with The Trade Desk’s foundational Unified ID 2.0. Tealium customers will be able to activate data within The Trade Desk to enrich identities and reach relevant audiences.

Through a server-to-server integration, Integral Ad Science will now offer expanded measurement capabilities across Amazon DSP media buys. Campaign measurement will be available for Amazon custom audiences and Twitch inventory. The proffer includes brand safety, viewability and invalid traffic tracking and cross-device measurement.

While 90% of enterprise marketers think their teams can handle tech stack migrations, only 40% claim to be experienced with them. Fortunately, over 90% are happy with their tech stacks. Where they are looking for change, efficiency and productivity are the leading motivators (67%) over cost savings (52%).

PayPal, sitting on data from millions of users, has entered the ad business with a new division headed by Mark Grether who formerly led advertising at Uber. Earlier this year, it launched Advanced Offers, using AI and company data to help merchants target PayPal users with personalized offers. Unlike Advanced Offers, the new ad product will be available to brands that don’t sell products or services through PayPal.

Design platform Canva has launched Canva Enterprise, a new subscription offering for large organizations (and a fairly explicit challenge to Adobe). Among the new tools are an “infinite whiteboard” for collaboration and Brand Kit, a central repository for brand assets with customizable brand controls and approvals. The AI-powered Magic Studio is included.

Unified Natural Foods Inc’s new Media Network (UMN) will serve independent grocery retailers, including 30,000-plus retail locations and more than 10,000 brand partners.  It will be powered by retail media platform Swiftly. Suppliers will be able to market directly to shoppers via the retailers in the network.

Despite using 4+ audience management systems on average, 85% of media companies don’t feel they have the technology they need to reach their goals, according to this study from audience marketing platform Omeda.  Top challenges are converting unknown visitors (60%) and disconnected workflows (52%).  To close the gaps, 25% plan a CDP investment, which is more than personalization (22%), campaign management (18%) or data governance (7%) but less than marketing automation (45%), data visualization/performance/reporting (33%), database/data warehouse (33%) and AI and machine learning (29%).

While companies focused on AI like Nvidia and OpenAI performed well in polling-based Axios Harris reputation scores, social media platforms, notably those using generative AI, did poorly. Nvidia, the chips company, was new to the list and was number one for overall reputation, number eight for trust. Which begs the question, how many of those polled know Nvidia as well as they know Facebook or X?

Only 27.3% of consumers from a 9,500 sample believe AI has the potential to improve their customer experience and only 26% think it will make experience more personalized (other surveys report much more enthusiasm). More than half, however, were interested in using chatbots to get information. A growing number (over 40%) will use ChatGPT or similar solutions to research purchases.