CDP Institute

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.

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.