CDP Institute

Martech spending in the U.S. will exceed $20 billion in 2022, according to this eMarketer forecast. Wow, that’s impressive…oh wait, it’s a tiny fraction of the $344 billion global martech spend estimated by other sources, based largely on Gartner’s well-known estimate that martech is about one-quarter of all marketing spend. Further perspective:  Salesforce alone had $26 billion in revenue last year, although not all of that would count as martech.

Marketing operations staff are responsible for running many of those martech systems. This MarketingOps report, sponsored by Knak and Adobe, finds that Adobe Marketo Engage, HubSpot, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud are packaged software they use most – although spreadsheets are the most popular tool of all. Integration (69%) and scalability (53%) were the most-chosen criteria for new tech, but take that with a grain of salt: apparently features were not an option in the survey.

We have lots of acquisition news today, Dear Reader, and I’m not talking about your first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season.  Let’s start with Instacart buying pricing and promotions platform Eversight.  It’s an interesting extension as Instacart works to protect its pandemic-driven market gains in the face of new home delivery options and a return to in-store sales.

Did you know that TIME Magazine (1923) predates the first bread slicing machine (1928)?  TIME’s original business model went stale long ago, although the company has expanded its digital, video, events, and other businesses since Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife bought it in 2018.  TIME just made its first acquisition under the Benioff regime, purchasing no-code website builder Brandcast.  The tech will help TIME clients build customized microsites.

Mobile measurement platform Branch has purchased AdLibertas, a predictive data platform for mobile apps.  AdLibertas pulls together first-party data from multiple sources and uses to results to help mobile app developers track user behavior and optimize their ad programs.  It’s especially important as Apple and Google cut off the flow of third-party ad targeting and measurement data.

Have you pondered how to furnish a data clean room?  Epsilon is stocking its clean room with consumer packaged goods transactions from IRI, making it easier for clients to do richer analysis and target customers across channels.  Think of it as a mini-bar for customer data.

CDPs are supposed to be good at integration, so it’s not especially newsworthy that Blueshift has connected with cloud communications vendor Sinch for two-way mobile conversations.  But the News Gods have been frolicking in Santorini for weeks, so we’ll mention it anyway.  Channels include Instagram, Facebook Messenger, SMS, MMS, RCS and WhatsApp.

This IDC study on data maturity contains several surprises.  It turns out that laggards are more likely than leaders to use basic data such as website traffic and CRM information, while leaders use fancier inputs such as web behaviors, customer feedback, and server-side events.  Leaders also spend less time on data analytics and make less use of specialists for data validation.  More expected: leader have a better understanding of customer journeys, use more automated data management, are more confident in their data quality, and have much faster access to their... Read More >

Are cloud databases the best thing since sliced bread?  Many people think so, although I’d guess most are too young to remember actual unsliced bread.  For the record, so am I, although I do recall the bread slicing machine in my uncle’s bakery, which made a jiggling motion while set of parallel blades descended through the loaf.  Very cool, but I digress.  The news here is that Teradata has launched a new cloud-native database to compete with the likes of Snowflake and Databricks.

The analysts at Forrester Consulting might have liked the bread-slicing machine, but they’re not impressed with most companies’ cloud data migrations.  This study for Capital One finds that nearly three-quarters of companies have yet to move the most of their data to the cloud.  The most common obstacle is unpredictable costs due to usage-based cloud pricing models (82%), followed closely by data quality (80%), cataloging (78%), understanding data (76%), and observability (74%).  Old habits die hard: more than half (56%) say their data management is centralized, 19% say it’s decentralized,... Read More >

Komprise takes a sunnier view of cloud migration, reporting that on-premises-only environments fell from 20% to 12% since last year, although 50% still use a mix of cloud and non-cloud.  Two-thirds of the companies spend more than 30% of their IT budget on data storage and protection, so it’s not surprising that cutting costs is the main reason for cloud migration.  Better news is that self-service data access and greater agility are the next-most-common reasons.  This matters to marketers because user data is the most common type of unstructured data.

Google has added digital out-of-home (DOOH) ads to their Display & Video 360 ad campaign software.  The extension will make it easier for marketers coordinate DOOH purchases with display, video, TV, audio, and other channels already covered by Display & Video 360.  Google’s control over ad buying software is often attacked on anti-trust grounds, but they aren’t letting that slow them down.