CDP Institute

Retail media growth is coming at the cost of paid search budgets.  Standard Media Index reports that search ad growth rates have fallen faster than non-search ads for the past year, and that search spending by companies that sell through retailers has dropped more quickly than spending by others.  They conclude that companies selling through retailers are shifting their spend from search to retail media networks.

Complete this sentence: if you read just one report this year about AI in call centers, (a) you’re lucky (b) that’s enough (c) this should be it.   I’ll go with (c), since this 93 page opus from DMG Consulting offers precise explanations of the different technologies and applications.  Use cases galore!

Let’s look outside the conventional advertising box today, Dear Reader.  We’ll start with this survey from BWG Strategy and Talon America, which finds that out-of-home ads are taking a larger share of total marketing spend.  Funds are most likely to be shifted from social media (31%) and linear TV (25%) budgets.

In-person events are waking up from pandemic-induced hibernation.  Kaltura reports that more marketers are planning live events (42%) than virtual (40%) in 2023, a reversal from 2022, which virtual events (43%) were more common than in-person (39%).  Live, virtual, and hybrid events are each preferred for different purposes, so it’s likely we’ll continue to see a mix of all types.

Gaming grew tremendously during the pandemic, and in-game advertising grew with it.  But while one-third of gamers find the ads annoying, this Frameplay study finds that ads integrated with gameplay are much more acceptable.  Something to bear in mind as consumers gain more control over which ads they see.

However you feel about Tuesday’s U.S. election results, here’s some news we can all agree is bad: Salesforce has laid off “hundreds” of employees.  It’s another strong hint that the layoffs hitting other tech sectors will apply to martech too.  On the bright side: the figure is a tiny fraction of Salesforce’s 70,000+ employees.  Compare it to Meta laying off 11,000 people or 13% of its workforce.

Openprise has launched a “RevOps Data Automation Cloud” that unifies its measurement, funnel automation, and data orchestration solutions for marketing and sales departments.  Openprise qualifies as a CDP although they don’t use the term anywhere I can find it.

You might wonder why Capital One would invest $96 million investment in travel app Hopper, let alone why it’s relevant to this newsletter.  I’ll argue the deal is about Capital One gaining access to Hopper’s first-party data, which makes it a media play.  Hopper describes its goal as building a travel super-app with strong social commerce capabilities.

Ecommerce marketing platform Klaviyo is buying Napkin.io, which lets developers write and deploy code directly from a browser.  It’s a bit unusual for martech vendors to buy development tools, but apparently the Klaviyo folks were smitten.  It’s more low-code than no-code, but either way is aimed at making it easier to extend Klaviyo capabilities.

Consumers and marketers are eagerly jumping into the metaverse.  This Sitecore study finds that one-third of marketers already have metaverse marketing programs and 42% of consumers are present or plan to visit shortly.  “Escaping reality” ranks high on their list of reasons, and who could blame them?

Many people are more interested in mixing virtual and actual reality than entering an entirely separate metaverse.  Smart contact lens maker Mojo Vision falls into the mixed-reality group.  They just announced an app that displays Alexa shopping lists within your contact lenses.  The time and effort savings are unimaginable.  No, really, I can’t imagine any.

Salesforce last week released the eighth edition of its State of Marketing Report.  As usual, lots of interesting data.  Particular highlights: fewer companies are going beyond the regulatory minimum to protect privacy (51% vs 61% last year); the number of average marketing data sources has grown to 15 from ten last year; and technology accounts for 15% of marketing budgets.