CDP Institute

HubSpot has gone live with a connector to ChatGPT’s deep research agent. Deep research, unlike ChatGPT’s familiar chat interface, can perform multi-step research on the internet, synthesizing large numbers of sources to produce something like a research report. Any HubSpot customers with a paid ChatGPT plan will be able to connect their CRM data to deep research.

Constant Contact, the digital marketing provider focused on small businesses, has acquired email and marketing automation platform Moosend from Sitecore. The acquisition is aimed at expanding Constant Contact’s customer base, especially in EMEA, where Moosend is well-established. Moosend will continue to power Sitecore Send for existing and new customers.

Seventy percent of marketers believe that up to half their email marketing tasks will be AI-driven by the end of next year, according to a survey by email platform Litmus. Almost a fifth (18%) put that figure at 50-75%. B2B marketers see content creation as its central role; B2C marketers are looking to it to provide campaign performance trends and insights.

Five months after acquiring CDP Lytics, digital experience platform Contentstack has announced that Lytics’ capabilities are infused into its EDGE platform as Contentstack Data and Insights. EDGE also incorporates Contentstack’s headless CMS. The new capabilities include audience analytics, real-time data activation and omnichannel campaign orchestration.

Back in the day, one of CDPs’ main selling points was connections to many data sources. But that advantage has eroded as cloud data warehouse vendors expand their data collection toolkits. The latest development is Snowflake Openflow, which promises to make data from virtually any source in any format available within Snowflake and includes pre-built connectors for major data sources.

You didn’t need a crystal ball to predict that AI’s ability to handle simple tasks would reduce hiring of entry-level employees who used to do them manually. This SignalFire report confirms that, although it also blames the end of “free money”-fueled over-hiring, and others cite tax changes in handling research costs. Gig work won’t pick up the slack: SimilarWeb finds that AI has led to less demand on freelance platforms and an even bigger crash for consumer edtech.

HCLSoftware has “reimagined” its 26-year-old Unica marketing automation platform as a tool for shifting from an “attention economy” based on “clicks and eyeballs” to an “intelligence economy” based on “insight, engagement, and experience.” If that seems a bit abstract, you might rather learn that key features of what’s now Unica+ include autonomous AI agents for segmentation, content creation, and campaign measurement; a workbench for custom AI models; real time personalization; intent identification; and a unified customer profile.

It was literally just yesterday that WPP Media launched “the industry’s first Large Marketing Model” trained on “trillions of signals across more than 350 partners” to “continuously optimize audience segmentation, creative development, and media activation”. Today MiQ is offering MiQ Sigma, which “connects over 700 trillion signals across 300 diverse data feeds” to train models that allow programmatic ad buyers to “generate personas, build audiences, and create campaigns.” So now there are two.

After years of optimizing their websites for traditional search engines, marketers are scrambling to retain visibility in genAI search results. SEO veteran Conductor is stepping forward to help with Conductor AI, a content copilot that identifies content gaps and scores content for discoverability by genAI engines.

CDP Treasure Data is launching five new agentic AI suites for marketing, CX and customer service. Service AI Suite will support B2B sales teams and field service agents; Engagement AI Suite will support timely interactions with customers; Paid Media AI Suite will drive campaign performance; Creative AI Suite will develop personalized content; Personalization AI Suite will deliver content based on contextual data. Treasure Data also announced a Migration Agent to help customers move from legacy CDPs to Treasure Data.

The ultimate dream (or nightmare) for AI in marketing is one model to rule everything from insight generation to campaign execution and measurement. WPP Media has taken a giant step in that direction with Open Intelligence, a “universal model” using trillions of data signals from 350+ partners to predict audience behavior and marketing performance, enabling continuously optimized, personalized campaigns across all channels. The wide array of data sources will relieve dependence on identity data and help protect consumer privacy.

Another EU battlefront has opened for Amazon, with German regulators saying Amazon’s price controls on third-party sellers may break domestic and EU laws. Amazon uses algorithms to de-prioritize products perceived as over-priced in search results. Amazon is challenging these preliminary findings saying changes would be bad for customers.