CDP Institute

Automated marketing platform HCL Unica’s V12.1.10 release presents new AI features including AI-based predictive models. These will identify high-value prospects, products to recommend, next-best-channel for the recommendations and optimized send times. AI will also refine customer segmentation based on multiple data sources.

Although a new report from the IAB shows healthy growth in CTV ad spend, that growth is not keeping pace with the attention viewers are giving CTV. Data from Innovid shows time spent per day streaming projected to grow 5% between 2022 and 2026; ad spend is projected to grow 2% over the same period. Nevertheless, the 108 million viewers for the Netflix stream of the Tyson-Paul fight suggests linear TV’s major stronghold on live sports may have been breached.

Based on multiple sources, including surveys of 1,500 B2B buyers and 1,500 B2B marketers, Digitalzone found that 32% of AI purchasers reside in IT. That doesn’t mean AI purchasing is confined to tech; it stretches across many departments including finance (12%) and procurement (11%). Marketing, however, is low on the ladder with just 7% of AI buyers.

The IAB is forecasting that digital video will capture some 60% of total TV/video ad spend this year, a growth of 100% on its share five years ago. The new 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report also notes that CTV saw a 16% increase YoY in ad spend growth. CTV and social video will be the top “must-buys” for advertisers in 2025.

Personalized web experiences are nothing new, but cloud-based website builder Wix is introducing a new solution to support it. A new AI-powered adaptive content app will read visitor cues and generate dynamic content in real time. Wix users play a role in guiding the AI by setting “conditions” from pre-defined function templates.

Publishers and media owners must be happy that Google is letting third-party cookies run free after all. According to a report from Optable and Digiday, 74% of the almost 100 surveyed say their monetization strategy relies on third-party cookies or other shared identifiers. Only 4% can identify more than half their audience using first-party data.

YouTube is not just a video platform, of course, it’s also a powerful search engine and it has begun testing a Google AI Overviews carousel that will appear in results for selected queries. Given the threat AI Overviews is perceived to pose to click-thru traffic in Google Search results, there’s a question about whether the YouTube initiative could depress click-thrus to brand and creator videos. Right now, the feature is only visible to a sub-set of U.S. premium users.

Google has updated its terms of service for Local Service Ads advertisers to allow it to use, modify, and analyze all content within the advertiser’s LSA profile — including phone calls from prospects. These rights are asserted not just across Google’s platforms and products but its affiliates too; who could object to that? This comes against the background of the new, improved AI-driven lead dispute process, which just happens to capture service details, pricing, special offers, and discounts.

Customer data and data management platform FirstHive has entered a strategic partnership with digital CX platform Infogain. Infogain will draw on FirstHive’s customer data-based predictive analytics to bolster its delivery of personalized experiences. FirstHive uses data from multiple touchpoints to create unified customer profiles that feed into its recommendation engine.

When BlueConic bought experience builder platform Jebbit last July, it positioned the combination as “the industry’s first-ever Operating System for Customer Data”. In case their meaning wasn’t clear, they’ve now directly integrated Jebbit with BlueConic profiles and segmentation, enabling marketers to launch no-code quizzes, surveys and personalized guided journeys without leaving the CDP.

OpenAI hasn’t announced it, but new coding now lets ChatGPT connect with Shopify’s hosted checkout. For users this would mean completing purchases without leaving ChatGPT for an external site. It’s a logical extension of OpenAI’s also unannounced, but widely expected, plan to place ads in ChatGPT responses.

Data privacy solutions provider Didomi will acquire server-side tagging platform Addingwell using funds from Marlin Equity Partners. Addingwell’s tagging and data monitoring helps companies maintain secure control over data collection and sharing. The two France-based companies are responding to the increasing challenges of user data protection.