CDP Institute

Deep thinkers in the advertising world recognize that a single ad is rarely the only reason someone makes a purchase. But one-touch attribution is irresistibly simple. Sam’s Club has just announced it will link in-store purchases to online search ads within its retail ad network, giving many marketers what they want even if they know better.

Sam’s Club parent Walmart is expanding its own retail media offerings through a deal with Innovid, which specializes in delivering connected TV ads. Innovid technology will power Walmart DSP, which helps people buy ads on the Walmart Connect retail media network. The deal covers ads targeted at Walmart customers but delivered outside of Walmart’s own website.

It’s not all good news in retail media land. Gap is shutting down its retail media network, according to press reports. The troubled retailer will focus its resources on more pressing issues such as logistics and fulfillment.

“I have given up the search for truth and am looking for a good fantasy” has graduated from t-shirt slogan to corporate philosophy at Microsoft, which just added text-based image generation to Bing. You can ask whether Bing is still a search engine if it makes up its own answers, or see how Rembrandt would have painted an elephant in pajamas.

Much speculation has been devoted to the impact on work of ChatGPT and its generative AI cousins. This Fishbowl study finds there’s more real-world experience than you might think: 43% of working professionals reported they have already used ChatGPT for work. But it’s still a bit of a secret: 68% hadn’t told their boss they were using it.

Taking a brief break from AI news, let’s note that in-store technology and media company Mood Media has just purchased in-store ad network tech vendor Vibenomics. It’s all about the continuing boom in retail media networks.

Adobe is running its Summit conference this week, which means lots of product announcements.  Real-Time CDP has its share, including customer segments created by generative AI and various types of integrations with Merkle, Epsilon, LiveRamp, Adobe Commerce, Marketo Engage, Amazon Ads, and TikTok.  They also announced general availability of Privacy and Security Shield, a package of privacy features including HIPAA support.

Did someone mention HIPAA?  Treasure Data just announced they’ve added full HIPAA compliance to all their products.  Obviously they’re not the first or only CDP to do this, but maybe you’re keeping score.

We’ve recently written quite a bit about ad verification in different channels, so I was going to skip news that DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science are offering ad viewability and fraud protection on Netflix.  But the industry was super-excited when Netflix started accepting ads a few months back, so maybe you’ll care about this as well.

Epsilon has launched a new Digital CDP, a SaaS-based product that enables users to launch digital ad campaigns through Epsilon’s PeopleCloud and third-party social media and display ad platforms. The system lets marketers enrich their first-party customer profiles with external information on demographics, lifestyle, transactions, and web browsing behavior.

Customer satisfaction is the top metric for customer success, according to this IDC study for Twilio. Yet just 33% reported fully interoperable data and communication tools. CDPs are high on the list of solutions, with 34% expecting to have a CDP within two years, a figure that’s higher than CRM (26%) but lower than marketing tools (50%), communication software (50%) or customer support software (46%).

This Sprinklr report paints an even more dismal picture of the state of customer data, with just 22% of customer service leaders saying their organization has unified it completely. Nearly two-thirds (64%) plan to invest in customer data management and in AI, although 60% report that AI solutions have so far not been as effective as hoped.