CDP Institute

CDP industry employment rose just 2% in the second half of 2023, the smallest rise on record, according to the CDP Institute’s semi-annual Industry Update. But averages can mislead: employment rose by 10% or more at 20% of the firms listed.  The ten vendors added to the report were mostly CDP-specialist start-ups; by contrast, many new firms in previous reports were larger, older companies that were adding CDP features to existing campaign and delivery capabilities.

Pretty much every business software vendor has added some flavor of generative AI-based assistance to its interface, and Snapchat reports seven million users pay $3.99 per month for gen-AI in Snapchat+.  But Microsoft has taken it up a notch by charging $20 per month for “Copilot Pro”, which expands gen-AI in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote, and a $30 per month “Copilot for Microsoft 365” for businesses.  You can just see the dollar signs dancing in their eyes.

CDP Meiro has closed a $3 million Pre-Series A round.  It’s their first external funding.  Meiro will use the money to accelerate product development and to enter new markets.

Disney is collaborating with Lucid impact Measurement to give marketers dashboard visibility into current campaign outcomes in close to real time. This will be available globally across all Disney streaming platforms. It is also partnering with Innovid to offer real time creative optimization opportunities.

Google Cloud’s new genAI for retail tools include a conversational commerce solution to create personalized chatbots, a new customer service solution and catalog and content enrichment capabilities. It is also enhancing search for retailers with a large language model to help shoppers find products more easily. Over 80% of retailers feel a need to introduce genAI to their operations, Good Cloud said.

After a relative slowdown in 2022, mobile made a strong recovery in 2023 according to the new “State of Mobile” report from data.ai. Revenue, downloads and time spent all saw strong growth with nearly $1.5 billion in spending each day across app stores and mobile ads. Despite further decline across the board in 2023, mobile gaming did see double digit growth in some markets, including South Korea, France, Brazil and Turkey.

TechTarget, the platform that monetizes B2B software intent data through a large network of websites and other channels, will combine with Informa PLC’s Informa Tech digital businesses. The results are expected to be large growth in scale across global markets and verticals and a tenfold growth in addressable audience for the new TechTarget. The move will introduce Informa Tech clients to TechTarget while combining the two companies’ intent data assets.

A report from cybersecurity intelligence platform Redsift finds over 90% of global domains fail new requirements from Google and Yahoo that come into force on February 1. These include authenticate the domains you send from, make it easy for people to stop receiving your emails and don’t spam. Relatively few U.S. domains fail the tests — 6.52% compared with 50%, for example, in Japan.

Microsoft is introducing new copilot features to Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to help marketers build end-to-end projects and campaigns by using natural language prompts or uploading creative briefs. Copilot will respond with a project board and recommended content. Also, with NRF looming, a copilot template will help retail marketers to build personalized shopping experiences.

B2B demand management platform Integrate has announced the launch of Pipeline360, a new media division. Pipeline360 will have capabilities for managing display advertising and content syndication as well as marketing intelligence. Said Integrate, 38% of marketers we surveyed didn’t know what content syndication is.

The Federal Trade Commission has stepped in to ban X-Mode Social and its successor company Outlogic from sharing or selling sensitive location data. This is in a settlement of FTC allegations that the company sold location data that could be used to track, for example, visits to reproductive health clinics or domestic abuse shelters. This is the FTC’s first settlement with a data broker over the use of sensitive location information.

Eighty percent of organizations surveyed for the Capgemini Research Institute’s CMO Playbook series have either already allocated budget to integrating genAI into marketing, or plan to do so in the next six months. Sixty percent believe the potential benefits of the technology outweigh the risks. The survey also found a consensus that AI would supplement rather than replace human creativity.