CDP Institute

It seems like just yesterday that retail media was a cute little toddler looking for its place in the world.  Now we have no less than Microsoft offering a very grown up retail media platform based on its PromoteIQ acquisition.  Latest additions make it easier to place ads on a retailer’s own site, on other sites using retailer first-party data, and on in-store displays.  Release dates vary.

In-game ads are a candidate for Next Big Channel after retail media.  I think gamers’ minds are elsewhere but this Integral Ad Science survey finds 69% of gamers are open to non-disruptive in-game ads, especially if they’re relevant to the game.  They also warn that 44% will avoid brands that advertise near inappropriate content, something IAS sells tools to prevent.

ChatGPT is the Next Biggest Thing of all right now.  This newsletter hasn’t had many excuses to write about it, but we wouldn’t want you to think we’re not paying attention.  So let’s mention that Microsoft may invest $10 billion in ChatGPT owner OpenAI, and then embed ChatGPT in all kinds of products.

Nothing brightens the day like a nice CDP industry survey, eh, Dear Reader?  Our friends at Tealium have provided just that, with lots of good news about CDP value (74% show positive ROI within one year of deployment; companies with established CDPs are twice as likely to meet marketing objectives as those without).  Plenty more detail about use cases, features, performance, team size, and management.

TV programmers have long chafed at the power of Nielsen audience ratings.  Five of the biggest, including Comcast NBCUniversal, Paramount Global, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, and TelevisaUnivision, along with anti-Nielsen gadfly VAB, have created a Joint Industry Committee to certify alternative measurement currencies against standards the committee defines.  They will rely on the shared viewer IDs created by the OpenAP consortium, which is run by many of the same companies.

Remember when all the cool kids were migrating to the cloud-based services?  That’s so 2022.  Location data vendor HERE Technologies is now proudly touting on-premises implementation, citing better privacy, security, and control.  Rev up the DeLorean, Doc!

The relaxed post-New Year’s vibe has now worn off, so we can go back to obsessing about third-party cookies.  Programmatic ad buying platform The Trade Desk is helping with Galileo, which lets marketers upload customer lists from CDPs or other sources, apply the Unified ID 2.0 identifier, and use it to track members across audiences.  It’s less comprehensive than tracking with third-party cookies, but probably as close as we’ll get with current technology.

Data clean rooms are another not-quite-substitute for third-party cookies, offering a way to share limited amounts of data.  Pinterest is barking up that tree with a new LiveRamp partnership.  It will let advertisers upload their customer lists to the LiveRamp clean room, where they can be matched against the Pinterest member file to target Pinterest ads against people on both lists.

Third-party cookies may be vanishing, but other third-party data is more available than ever. Consumer purchase data compiler IRI reinforced the point with separate deals to (a) provide Meta with brand- and product-level sales data to measure results of Facebook and Instagram ads  and (b) offer 1,500 IRI-built individual-level audience segments to TV ad buyers through Experian.

The wave of tech industry layoffs rolled closer to CDP-land with news of a 10% reduction in staff at Salesforce.  The company blamed over-hiring in anticipation of growth that is no longer anticipated.  CDP vendors have largely avoided public layoffs, although we do hear scattered tales of unannounced reductions.

Dentsu-owned Merkle is selling its Response Management Group (RMG), which offers direct response data capture, customer care, and fulfillment, primarily to non-profit and government clients. The 600-person RMG was part of Merkle’s original business, which has now evolved into a 14,000-employee tech-based customer experience agency. Buyer is Moore, a 5,000-person specialist in fund-raising marketing and production.

Publicis Groupe-owned Epsilon also started in direct mail fund-raising and later became the customer marketing technology hub for a giant agency holding company.  In a nice bit of symmetry, Epsilon is adding mid-market website personalization tool Yieldify, which Publicis just purchased.