CDPs are fun, but they’re just a tiny corner of the martech industry. Adobe has provided today’s reality check by paying $1.275 billion for Frame.io, whose very narrow function is to provide review and approval functionality for video creators. That’s not to say Frame is insignificant: they have about 275 employees and claim more than one million users.
There’s a geeky sort of comfort in applying the familiar build vs buy debate to CDPs. But the boring truth is every company will do a mix of both. Twilio Segment has further blurred, or maybe clarified, the issue with a new Developer Toolkit that helps technical staff tailor their Segment CDP to their own business needs.
InfoSum’s niche is privacy-safe data sharing in a data clean room-ish fashion. It’s a capability some CDP vendors have (BlueConic just announced one) and others are likely to add through building, buying, or integration. InfoSum itself just raised a $65 million Series B, bringing total funding to $90 million.
Google lashed out at the Department of Justice’s threat to break up the company, calling the proposals “radical.” Among other things, Google says the proposals would threaten users’ privacy, stifle innovation and break Android and Chrome. Given the appeals process, it will likely be years before we know whether Google will stay in one piece.