CDP Institute

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute Department of the Obvious.  Today we have a report from the Content Marketing Institute that finds nearly half (46%) of writers and editors are worried that generative AI will reduce their income and almost as many (45%) think it will reduce the number of jobs in their field.  The only thing that’s not obvious is why 17% of respondents aren’t worried about AI at all.

Few things are as obvious as X/Twitter’s friendliness to hate groups under Elon Musk’s management.  But research firm Media Matters still took a close look, and found ads from major national advertisers including The New York Times, Amazon, and Office Depot were appearing next to a pro-Nazi account.  The report came within days of entirely non-obvious claims by CEO Linda Yaccarino that X/Twitter is more brand-safe than ever.

It’s always obvious that leaders in every department overstate their importance.  The latest reminder comes from Jitterbit, which found that 75% of IT leaders say their department is the main driver of automation efforts while just 29% of marketing and human resources leaders agree.  Respondents say 51% of integration projects are managed by central IT compared with just 11% managed by business departments, but remember that the majority of respondents work in IT.

It’s good to be the king. Amazon has decided to charge a 2% fee for members of its Seller Fulfilled Prime program who chose not use Amazon fulfillment services. The fee is on top of the usual Amazon referral fee of 8% to 15%.

You may recall that robo-taxi services Cruise and Waymo received permission to expand their services in San Franciso last week, despite local opposition. It didn’t take long for that particular chicken to come home to roost: on Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles told Cruise to cut in half the number of operational vehicles, following a crash between a passenger-occupied, driverless Cruise car and a fire truck. Cruise complied but still argued its cars are better drivers on average than people.

Two-thirds of consumers prefer quick and easy interactions to warm and fuzzy personalized ones, according to this CCW/Digital survey. It’s no surprise but bears repeating since marketers keep forgetting it. Just 13% of consumers think brands are currently delivering highly personalized experiences, while 57% worry about the privacy and security of their data.

Back in May, Acoustic launched an all-in-one platform for multichannel marketing, journey orchestration, and behavioral experience insights called Acoustic Connect.  For reasons not immediately clear, they just re-announced the product with an emphasis on its use of the Snowflake cloud database.  It’s a useful reminder that while Snowflake is often connected to multiple components that mimic a packaged CDP, it can just as easily support a single integrated product.

Large language AI models like ChatGPT and Microsoft Bing have generally been trained on data scraped from the open Web without any particular permission.  Microsoft has now decided that’s really not so fair, at least if Microsoft is the one whose data is being scraped.  They recently changed their Terms of Service to prohibit people from extracting data from Microsoft’s own AI tools.

Amazon is expanding the reach of its display ad business by serving sponsored product ads on other websites including Pinterest, BuzzFeed, Hearst Newspapers, and Mashable.  Targeting will apparently be based on page context, campaign keywords, and cost-per-click targets rather than individual customer profiles.  It’s a good way for Amazon to grow without triggering anti-trust concerns.

Mobile adtech company InMobi has purchased Quantcast Choice, a consent management platform used by hundreds of publishers.  It’s an interesting extension that illustrates the growing importance of privacy management in the ad publishing world.  Quantcast Choice will remain free to use, both companies promise.

App analytics platform AppsFlyer has added an OpenAI-powered query engine to its Data Clean Room.  We wouldn’t usually report such a relatively minor enhancement, but this ticks too many boxes to resist: generative AI, no-code, privacy, and Data Clean Room.  If only it were composable.

As many in the tech space are all-too-painfully aware, funding is generally down from year-ago highs.  Here’s a glimmer of good news: Carta reports that pre-seed funding actually rose in the second quarter of 2023 to $972 million, up 17% from the previous quarter.  Alas, the number of deals continued to drop, falling to 1,608 vs 1,820 the quarter before.