CDP Institute

Some news travels slowly, so we just learned that Netherlands-based Spotler Group purchased the CrossEngage CDP in late December and Datatrics CDP in October. Both will become part of Spotler’s Squeezely division, based on the Squeezely CDP that Spotler purchased in 2021. Venture-backed Spotler has bought about a dozen email, CRM, and related companies since 2020.

SEO and content marketing platform Brightedge estimates that 84% of Google search queries will prompt generative AI responses, impacting over $40 billion per year in search ad spend.  Google’s Search Generative Experience is likely to reduce click-through to advertisers’ websites.  Said Brightedge, “businesses need to prepare themselves for a Search revolution.”

It’s easy to put AI at the top of the list of digital customer experience trends for this year, but in its new report, “2024 Digital Customer Experience Trends,” DXP Contentsquare lists other factors expected to influence the space. These include immersive experiences, digital trust and digital accessibility alongside more predictable candidates like personalization. This is based on a survey of more than 2700 business professionals in marketing, UX and product roles.

LiveRamp, the data onboarding and identity resolution platform, has announced that it will acquire Habu, a data clean room software company with an international market. Habu will help existing LiveRamp customers share and resolve customer data in a privacy-compliant way. Will we see more acquisitions of DCRs by broader data platform?

DoubleVerify, the solution that safeguards brand safety in the digital advertising eco-system, is expanding its offering to Facebook Feed and Instagram Reels. DoubleVerify uses a classification system to screen content adjacent to ads for safety and suitability. It also offers authentication metrics on Meta media buys, addressing fraud issues and viewability.

For the first time, Apple is allowing developers to use outside payment systems in their apps. The freedom is welcome, the cost is not: Apple will charge a 27% fee. This will be in addition to any fees charged by the third-party payment processor. There will be a reduced commission of 12% for participants in the Small Business Program or for certain automatic renewals.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has announced the February launch of a working group to educate brands and agencies on opportunities for out-of-home and in-store retail media advertising. This follows the release of an IAB report, “Quantifying Retail Media In-Store Success: Measurement & Innovation” that discusses physical stores as the next major media channel. For example, Walmart’s potential in-store audience is almost double its digital audience.

Just over 50% of CEOs now believe that the short tenure of a CMO can be an indication of their success as they move on to other opportunities. Ninety-one percent of CEOs believe CMOs build trust across the C-Suite, although they lag behind CFOs and COOs when it comes to CEOs’ personal trust. CEOs’ assessment of CMOs across a range of factors has become more positive, according to the latest CEO study from AI marketing agency Boathouse.

No fewer than 98% of those surveyed by creative operations platform Lytho say they use or plan to use AI in their work. Fifty percent are using it weekly; 30% daily. Notably creatives were more interested in specific features and ease of use than marketers, marketers marginally more interested in cost-effectiveness than creatives.

Salesforce debuted new AI-powered tools for retail marketers at NRF this week. They include segment creation in Data Cloud driven by natural language prompts, prompt-driven content creation (email subject lines and body copy plus visual content) and predictive insights into potential promotion revenue. Also launched, Einstein CoPilot for Shoppers, a tool to conduct real-time conversations on retailer channels such as messaging apps.

Sports tech company Sportradar, a partner of organizations including the NBA and NHL, has launched FanID which draws on a range of first-party data sources to create anonymous but marketable fan profiles. The data will come from rights holders, commercial partners, and media companies. Sportradar’s own marketing activation tech will create multi-channel campaigns based on these profiles.

One third of CTV users have made purchases directly on their TV according to “The Shoppable TV Report: 2024 and Beyond” from LG Ad Solutions. Seventy-one percent always have their phone in their hand while watching TV; the same percentage have seen a QR Code and almost 50% have scanned one. Strong figures for the early days of a new purchasing channel.