CDP Institute

Small businesses love all-in-one sales, service, and marketing applications because they avoid the integration challenges of sharing data across separate systems. Salesforce has jumped into that ring with Starter, an all-in-one package that includes all sorts of templates and AI-powered optimization tools to make life easier still for resource-poor SMBs. Pricing starts at $25 per user per month.

A best-of-breed data quality monitoring tool is about as far as you can get from an all-in-one sales, service, and marketing platform, but there’s room in the market for both. Lightup offers a no-code data monitoring system which may democratize the process to some degree, but still will call for technically knowledgeable users. They just raised a $9 million Series A, which brings total funding to $20.7 million.

Have you noticed how much better consumers feel about their privacy since the industry-backed Digital Advertising Alliance launched its YourAdChoices Tool in 2021? Me neither. But it’s a good thing for the industry to point to, so the DAA is now testing an expansion that lets individuals opt out of ads based on a hashed phone number as well as a hashed email. Compliance is voluntary, of course.

Reports of DMP’s death may be exaggerated. This Piano report finds that 53% of publishers are still using a stand-alone DMP to activate customer data, compared with just 36% using a CDP for the purpose. Behavioral data is the most common basis for segmentation (82%), followed by demographics (77%) and context (64%). Download for even juicier details.

Remember when addressable TV was an oxymoron? Those days are gone, according to industry group Goaddressable: 73% of advertisers are now including addressable in their media plans, up from 57% just one year ago. Measurement is still the top obstacle, cited by 47%, but that number is dropping while cost efficiency (41%) and scalability (37%) are cited more often.

While U.S. technology regulators are generally toothless compared with their European counterparts, they still do manage the occasional nip. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted a new rule requiring public companies to report significant cybersecurity incidents within four business days. Can’t hurt.

We don’t see many acquisitions these days.  But here’s one: ad measurement vendor DoubleVerify is spending $125 to buy Scibids, which offers digital campaign optimization.  DoubleVerify is also reported to be adding in-game advertising to the channels it measures, a good reminder that in-game advertising is growing more important.

Maybe it only seems like martech acquisitions have become more rare.  Founders Advisors reports the number of deals has actually been about flat over the past two years, although deal value and valuations have definitely fallen.  Meanwhile, Crunchbase says the number of U.S.-based start-ups is down 86%  since 2020, with similar declines in Europe and Israel.  I wonder if Crunchbase just hasn’t identified some of newest companies yet.

Tired of worrying about those pesky data privacy rules?  DataGrail has launched a managed service to do it for you.  Alas, the scope seems limited to data mapping and response to consumer data requests, so handling the data correctly will still be up to your company.

European anti-trust authorities are increasing their pressure on Big Tech.  Last week, the European Commission opened a formal investigation into Microsoft’s practice of bundling Teams with its Office productivity suite, while the French Competition Authority announced an inquiry into whether Apple is using customer data for ad tracking without following the same rules it imposes on competitors via App Tracking Transparency.

Back in the tech-friendly US, major AI companies have formed the Frontier Model Forum to self-regulate the industry.  Beyond the stated purpose of promoting safe model development, unstated goals include staving off formal government regulation and blocking competition from small firms.  This is different from the voluntary agreement many of the same companies recently announced with the Biden Administration.

Big Tech companies cooperate in some ways but compete in others.  Meta, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Tom Tom have just released a set of data that could be used to build maps without relying on services from Google and Apple.  As location data becomes more precious, other firms have more reason to build their own services.