CDP Institute

CDP Hightouch is to offer Journey Simulations to provide insight into customer journeys before they are live using historic customer data. By anticipating how customers will engage at each touchpoint, marketers should be relieved of the need to optimize once a flow is live. Simulations can be tested and iterated as often as necessary before the journey is launched.

Doubling down on a commitment to personalized ad experiences in a conversational and agentic world, Microsoft is shutting down its DSP Invest which “no longer aligns” with that vision. Instead, Microsoft is developing AI-powered tools to give advertisers access to Microsoft audiences across its many platforms. Invest DSP will not be supported after February 2026.

Only 34% of teams say they fully embrace and utilize their CRMs according to a survey of almost 400 B2B professionals by Insightly (itself a CRM). Teams that are happy with their CRMs are 4x more likely to report significant revenue growth. There’s a big perception gap too, with 55% of executives believing their organization’s CRM is being used effectively, compared to just 27% of non-executives.

Databricks is highlighting its interest in marketers through out-of-the-box integrations with partners including Adobe, Braze, Salesforce, MessageGears, and Tealium. All will be able to run campaigns using information in the Databricks data intelligence platform without data syncing or copying.

Analytics platform Amplitude is also targeting marketing users with new capabilities to connect campaign touchpoints with in-product data such as behavior, engagement and lifetime value. The aim is to give a complete view of the customer journey from lead generation to long-term retention. Amplitude has also struck an agreement to recommend Twilio Segment as the CDP of choice while Twilio will root for Amplitude as digital analytics platform.

YouTube is expanding its direct commerce capabilities by allowing advertisers to place product feeds in ads on YouTube TV. Viewers will scan an onscreen QR code with their phone for a direct link to a place of purchase. The theory is that most viewers are already scrolling on their smartphones while watching TV.

Twilio is adding ‘contextual awareness’ to its Segment CDP, which in plainer English means data stored in Segment will be available when creating event-triggered, real-time messages. This and a redesigned journey architecture are part of Twilio’s “next generation” customer engagement platform, which also includes natural voice AI agents, voice and text analytics, and RCS and WhatsApp messaging. Twilio separately announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft to speed the adoption of conversational AI for customer engagement.

Perplexity is bringing direct commerce to its chat interface, partnering with PayPal to let consumers purchase products as well as services like travel within the chat. (ChatGPT doesn’t have this yet.) PayPal will handle payments, shipping and customer support; there will also be an option to pay using Venmo. Perplexity had already integrated with sellers like Shopify to provide purchase capabilities outside the chat.

Confounding predictions that AI search would challenge Google, BrightEdge reports total Google search impressions rose 49% year-on-year after the company introduced AI-powered summaries. But Google is keeping more of that traffic to itself: the same data shows a 30% drop in click-through rates. The findings conflict with a SOCi report that search impressions are down 10%, although SOCi’s source is not stated.

Mobile marketing platform Attentive joins the martech throng putting together a complete solution featuring data cloud Snowflake. Based on Snowflake Marketplace, the feature will allow joint customers to create a data loop, activating first-party data from Snowflake in the Attentive platform and sending performance data back to Snowflake for analysis. Attentive will also be able to feed customer interactions, including conversations, back to Snowflake.

With Prime Video reaching 130 million Americans, Amazon is rolling out direct commerce: the option to add items from a streaming ad directly to your Amazon shopping cart. The plan is to feature hyper-relevant, AI-powered contextual advertising so that ads will seem a “natural extension” of whatever you happen to be watching. Amazon will also introduce “pause” ads that will show branded content when you hit, guess what, pause (Prime subscribers can evade these pleasures by paying an extra $3 a month).

With interest in consumer attention growing, IAB and MRC are inviting comment on newly released attention measurement guidelines. The intention is to narrow the many different ways of measuring attention to four methods: data signals, visual tracking, physiological and neurological observations, and panels or surveys. Attention metrics are intended to be complementary to delivery and outcome data.