CDP Institute

Regardless of what CMOs see from their lofty perch, the demand for data management tools continues to grow in the trenches.  Low-code data import tool Flatfile is meeting this with capabilities that simplify connection to new data sources.  They just raised a $50 million Series B, bringing total funding to $95 million.

Tailwind provides social media and email marketing tools to small businesses.  They’ve only raised $10.7 million but have just added their seventh acquisition, paid ad management platform Nectar 9.  The goal is to offers small business owners a single tool for all types of marketing.

We don’t like bad news any more than you do, Dear Reader, but that’s what bubbled up today.  Integral Ad Sciences reports that ad fraud rates jumped substantially in the first half of 2022, even as time-in-view continued to shrink and brand risk rose.  On the brighter side, anti-fraud protection reduced fraud rates by more than 90% compared with campaigns lacking fraud detection.  Lots of detail here by country and device if you happen to need it.

Cybersecurity professionals are an inherently gloomy breed, so it’s no surprise that Trellix finds 60% say they’re struggling to keep up with evolving threats.  A majority report their company lost more than 5% of revenue to security breaches in the past twelve months.   Oddly enough, just 20% say they’re working to change their security approach, which can’t bode well.

Three-quarters (76%) of U.S. marketers feel their digital ad industry should do more to reduce carbon emissions, according to this Good-loop study.  Half (51%) say their organization plans to reach net zero carbon impact at some time, although just 24% have set actual targets.  More (61%) are at least tracking carbon cost of their campaigns.

FindMine offers hope for the fashion-challenged everywhere, with machine-learning-based advice on pulling together coordinated outfits.  Results are based on a combination of sales data, visual content, and marketing inputs, and can be distributed in pretty much any channel.  The firm just raised additional funding, bringing total financing to $9.9 million.

People with human friends can use augmented reality to ask their advice while shopping remotely.  But while that’s a popular application, this Ipsos survey finds that Americans generally doubt that AR or the metaverse in general will make their lives better.  In fact, most said it was not interesting (39%), a privacy risk (22%), or just hype (20%), while a mere 17% found it exciting and 19% said it would help them learn new things.

Out-of-home advertising is about as far from the metaverse as you can get.  It’s no particular surprise that this study from OOH marketplace OneScreen.ai finds 96% of OOH advertisers are happy with their results, that 78% plan increased spending, or that 68% find the buying process is “chaotic”.  A bit unexpected: more use traditional OOH (51%) than digital (41%) while just 8% use both.

The build vs buy argument rages on in CDP circles, with the build case being pressed by IT departments and supported by vendors selling tools such as data pipeline software.  This Airship survey offers a helpful reminder that IT departments rarely prioritize marketing needs over more visible projects such as new features and bug fixes.  In fact, just 13% say all their enhancement requests are ultimately fulfilled. This would support a case for no-code systems that marketers can update for themselves, although the survey finds nearly all marketers depend on... Read More >

This BARC survey argues that IT-run data warehouses are a dying breed, precisely because they fail to empower business users.  There’s huge disagreement on whether current data and analytics applications meet current requirements: 70% of business users say they’re not adequate, while just 32% of IT specialists agree.  The study authors conclude that a federated model is the best approach because it gives more power to business users.

Does it really matter if marketers don’t get the data they want? You betcha. Kantar finds 86% of retailers say first-party data is a core pillar of their app strategy, while CallMiner reports that 62% of senior contact center decision makers feel they don’t collect all the CX data they need. In other words, improvements are essential and giving IT departments more control is not going to work.

Salesforce and The Trade Desk’s Unified ID 2.0 probably get more attention than they deserve, but you do seem interested in them, Dear Reader.  So here’s a double shot: Salesforce just added an App Exchange app from The Trade Desk to generate UID2 identity tokens, which can then be linked to UID2 tokens from other sources.  UID2 is based on a consented email address, so it’s not a replacement for third-party cookies.  But it helps.