CDP Institute

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.

Move over, Large Language Models: Microsoft thinks a Small Language Model is often a better fit.  They’ve just released something called Phi-3-mini, which can easily run on a smartphone or laptop computer.  This makes custom models cheaper to build and supports applications where a network connection is unavailable.

Security is another reason to build your own custom models.  Cybersecurity firm Riversafe surveyed 250 U.K. CISOs and found that around 20% have had sensitive corporate data leaked through employee use of generative AI.  Without proper controls, data entered into a model like ChatGPT may be visible to other users of the tool.

Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation.  The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.

Salesforce today announced the creation of a Zero Copy Partner Network, including database, data set, and implementation partners.  The network will support Salesforce’s previously-announced Zero Copy initiative, which gives Salesforce products direct access to data stored outside of the Salesforce Data Cloud platform.  There are some performance limits, so this supplements rather than replaces storing core elements within the Data Cloud itself.

HubSpot is bringing AI-powered text, image and audio to creation to Content Hub. It is also adding a tool, Content Remix, that can generate variations for different channels based on one original content asset. Service Hub gets two new AI-powered workspaces for customer service reps and customer success managers.

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.

Flaws in Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals could allow users’ anonymity to be compromised and permit tracking, says the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Among its responsibilities, the ICO is charged with protecting data privacy. The concerns have been shared with the Competition and Markets Authority which is already scrutinizing Google’s proposals from an antitrust perspective.

International supermarket chain Aldi says it is the first retailer to deploy cashier-free checkout in an existing, full-size store in the U.S. It is implementing Grabango (get it?) checkout-free technology in Aurora, Ill. This comes after Amazon dropped its Just Walk Out technology from large grocery stores, although it will continue to use it in smaller locations.

Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.

Behavioral data analytics platform Fullstory has introduced a new solution, Data Direct, to capture behavioral signals across web and mobile and channel them into destinations within the business’s data eco-system. The flow of structured behavioral data can, for example, be integrated into data warehouses, APIs and webhooks. Data Direct will be available within Fullstory or as a standalone solution.

The Japan FTC has found that Google placed unfair restrictions on Yahoo Japan when it altered a 2020 deal to allow Yahoo to use Google’s search engine advertising technology that linked ads to search keywords. Google has submitted a plan to resolve the dispute that the FTC has called “workable.” The FTC has said that Google’s unfair practices started ten years ago and continued for some seven years.