CDP Institute

Contextual advertising is a more realistic option to replace cookie-based targeting.  Sadly, this Nielsen study finds that contextual data alone is among the least valuable signals for delivering return on investment, although it does help in combination with other factors.  Their conclusion is based on multi-touch attribution studies, which find that individual-level purchase data and look-alike models work best.

Comcast Advertising took another reality-based approach to media optimization, analyzing more than 20,000 multi-screen TV campaigns to see what’s working.  Their chief conclusion was the budget optimal mix is 20-30% streaming with the rest going to linear TV.  There some other intriguing data about the growth in programmatic and audience-based buying, but they show percentages without base values so it’s tough to assess.

Tech is fun but a little caution is always a good idea.  This Pentagon-funded report on blockchain says that, whatever its theoretical virtues, existing real-world implementations contain major security weaknesses.  Raise your hand if you’re shocked.

Deepfakes – computer-generated voice and video that replicates real people – pose many obvious dangers.  One you might not have considered is deepfakes acing their tech job interviews.  The FBI says it’s already happening, and can result in criminals gaining access to sensitive information.  Puts a new twist on the old joke: “How many people work here?” “About half.”

Amazon competes with pretty much everyone in the retail world these days, so making decisions based on data from Amazon seems a bit risky.  But Amazon hopes brands will ignore any conflict and subscribe to their Store Analytics service, which reports on anonymized shopper behavior in Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores.  Are you feeling lucky?

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute’s Department of the Obvious.  The boss left work suddenly today, muttering something about extradition treaties, so I’m filling in.  Here’s an Integral Ad Science study that used eye tracking technology to find that people viewing content on a topic pay more attention to ads on that topic.  Even more obvious, their purchase intent is higher too.

The headline on this PwC study for Adform isn’t immediately obvious: first-party IDs improve programmatic ad results.  But what the study mostly found is you get more responses when you show ads to more people.  First-party IDs come into play because they let you show ads to people who would otherwise be unreachable in cookieless environments.

This MarTech salary survey finds that marketers’ top activity is building marketing programs, which is about as obvious as it gets.  Nearly as obvious: buying technology is the number one job for marketing ops staff.  There’s also non-obvious content, such as who gets paid more, but that’s not my department so you’ll have to download the report for that information.

Here’s a straw in the wind: Acquia has added a self-service interface to process data deletion requests submitted by consumers under privacy regulations. It’s one more example of CDPs providing privacy-related services. Separately, Acquia announced a Workato integration, which will enable connections through Workato to hundreds of third-party cloud services.

Customer data problems are expected to reduce revenue by more than half (56%) of the marketers surveyed by Forrester for Amperity.  The study found that personalization (81%) and segment targeting (80%) are the top priorities in choosing a data platform, even though marketers recognize they need to build unified profiles before they can do anything else.

“Embedded analytics” might refer to frisky data scientists, but its proper meaning is analytical features built into a product interface. It’s more common than you may have realized (as, perhaps, are frisky data scientists): 55% of respondents to this ThoughtSpot survey say it’s already part of their products. Improved engagement, revenue, and retention were the most-cited benefits.

Inflation-challenged marketers are putting a new stress on efficiency, according to this Merkle report.  They’re eagerly new channels such as retail media networks and connected TV, while prioritizing creative and analytics investments that can optimize performance in all media. And, yes, they’re worried that privacy changes will impact both targeting and measurement.  Download for more interesting insights.