CDP Institute

Blueshift has announced a new Audience Insights module using real-time analytics to source insights into customer behavior without leaning on engineering and analytics teams. The module features an interface for data visualization. Blueshift also announced additional data warehouse syncs with Databricks, to be followed by Google BigQuery.

Trust in ecommerce platforms lags behind social media marketplaces, brick and mortar stores and branded digital storefronts according to a new survey of 500 adult consumers. It can’t help that 42% frequently receive damaged goods and even more report financial fraud, delivery delays and payment glitches. E-sellers are frustrated by back-end processing and fulfillment delays.

In an extensive survey of global digital demographics, media intelligence firm Meltwater reports that almost 98% of internet users (aged 16 to 64) have some kind of mobile phone (mostly smartphones) while almost 60% have some kind of PC or laptop. There’s growth in ownership YoY, but it’s single digits or less, arguably suggesting that the use of these devices has reached saturation point. 5.35 billion out of the global population of 8.08 billion are using the internet.

Consumer perception prediction platform Curated for You has unveiled a new Purchase Intent Email and SMS Trigger platform. Email and SMS triggers have traditionally been based on past consumer behavior such as cart abandonment. The new platform anticipates future needs based on recent behavior as well as demographic and location data. It seeks to trigger actions based on understanding motivation for behavior rather than just, for example, purchased product attributes.

Technology review site TrustRadius has identified AI-written software reviews as a new threat to authenticity and quality, saying that using AI to generate content represented as the user’s own could lead to “legal repercussions.” The future lies in video reviews, it says in its 2024 Review Transparency Report. These can be captured at vendor events, reducing time investment on the part of the reviewer.

Lack of trained employees is a problem for marketing organizations at all levels.  One issue may be that employees prefer face-to-face training (cited by 69% in this iSpring study), while course creators prefer to build online courses (cited by 77%).   Most companies create their training content in-house, although externally-sourced content is more popular in consumer industries including media, automotive, retail, and financial services.

Reddit, the social media platform and community network, has filed a registration statement with the SEC in preparation for an initial public offering of its Class A common stock. Reddit has been a private company since its founding in 2005 and is one of the top 20 most visited websites in the world. The IPO is likely to boost its standing in the advertising market and the expected injection of capital could help refine its ad products, according to experts.

Highly restrictive legislation on minors’ use of social media has passed both houses of the Florida legislature and will now go to Governor Ron DeSantis. The ban covers any sites that, among other things, track user activity and allow children to upload content and interact with each other, regardless of parental approval. Similar laws have been blocked in the courts on First Amendment grounds, most recently in Ohio.

Around 52% of data planners, strategists and activators involved in programmatic advertising think there will be an industry solution to replace third-party cookies, although there’s little evidence that will happen. The group also tends to underestimate the share of traffic on browsers that already block cookies (it’s 44%).  Over a third (the largest group) say they have considered alternatives but found them lacking in scale and accuracy.

Ad Fontes Media, a company that rates news sites for reliability and bias, has announced the integration of its rating data with The Trade Desk’s programmatic advertising platform. This will allow the screening out of highly partisan, AI-generated and clickbait sites, preferentially serving ads to sites containing quality journalism. Directing ad spend to low quality sites not only wastes dollars and threatens brand safety but de-monetizes quality news operations.

Although on-site advertising will remain the central retail media strategy, off-site advertising will play a larger role in 2024. About a third of advertisers plan to shift funds into off-site advertising — including display, online video, CTV and social — in the next twelve months. Retail media will be the fastest-growing ad channel in the US in 2024 according to an October 2023 eMarketer forecast.

The last non-direct click method used by Google Analytics makes it hard to prove the impact of paid social. Similarly, pixel-based click metrics at top of funnel no longer provide an adequate view of impact. Fospha, a measurement platform for ecommerce, advocates combining multi-touch attribution with marketing mix modeling to understand effectiveness of ad spend.