Here’s another fun fact: the average company has 254 SaaS applications, according to this survey from SaaS management vendor Productiv. Less fun: just 45% of those apps are used on a regular basis, although the rate is a slightly higher 54% for apps that departments select for themselves. Small surprise: the average marketing departments uses 44 SaaS apps, which is fewer than most other departments.
This Harris Poll study for Redpoint Global offers a sobering view of customer experience reality. They found that marketers are twice as likely as consumers to think brands deliver an excellent experience (51% vs 26%), while under half of the marketers who use advanced technologies including personalization, AI-driven recommendations, or multi-variate testing think they are having great success with them. Fun fact: the average number of customer engagement systems is now 16, nearly double the figure in 2019.
If you’re collecting stats on CDP usage, 25% of brand marketers surveyed for Winterberry Group have a CDP and another 9% plan to add one. That compares with 58% having an enterprise data warehouse and 65% with a marketing database. The main thrust of the study is customer journey management, and Winterberry concludes that the going so far has been rough: it finds just 17% of companies are “journey focused”, while 58% are still organized around campaigns. Download for detailed maturity models, if you’re into that sort of thing.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.