CDP Institute

If there’s a trend to descriptive product names like “Intelligence”, no one told the folks at obscurely-named messaging platform Gupshup.  They just bought Active.AI, a conversational AI platform for financial institutions.  They also coined the term “Conversational Banking as a Service” but I’m sure they were just kidding.

I hope you don’t get tired of hearing about post-cookie advertising solutions.  There’s a new one from programmatic media company MiQ, complete with a proprietary identity graph, expanded integration with LiveRamp’s identity graph, and contextual data from Similarweb.

On-site search is an important feature on ecommerce systems.  But it’s hard to do well.  Google Cloud just made things easier by releasing Retail Search, a managed service that applies Google search technologies to product searches a company’s own website.

Hospitality vendor Cendyn, whose system does everything from marketing to reservations to analytics, has launched a new cloud-based platform that includes a CDP and web content management system. It’s a good example of what CDP Institute labels an “operational CDP”, since the scope includes operational as well as data and marketing functions.

Clarify Health pulls together all kinds of customer data to help healthcare organizations understand “patient journeys” and make predictions to guide healthcare decisions.  It’s unclear whether it’s technically a CDP, which would only be true if it also shares the data with other systems.  What is clear is that they just raised a $150 million Series D, bringing total funding to $328 million.

Milan-based CDP and marketing agency Contactlab has been purchased by Growens, a global martech company whose other holdings include messaging system MailUp (Italy), CDP Datatrics (The Netherlands), no-code content builder BEE (U.S.) and email provider Acumbamail (Spain).  The cash, stock, and earn-out deal is valued up to €6.5 million ($7.2 million).

Canadian marketing solutions vendor Wishpond has acquired London-based referral collection system Viral Loops for US$2.3 million.  It’s Wishpond’s fifth acquisition since going public in 2020.  The company is pulling together components of a small business marketing suite.

Here’s a surprise: European Union anti-trust regulators are attacking a tech giant that isn’t Google, Facebook, or Amazon.  The regulators are studying whether Microsoft’s cloud service business has continued anti-competitive practices that earned it €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion) in fines in the past, or maybe has found some new ones.  

Let’s catch up with some product news today, Dear Reader.  We’ll start with Braze, which has released Braze for Commerce, a package of personalization tools for retail and ecommerce merchants.  The one new product in the bundle, Braze Catalog, lets marketers use product data within personalized messages.  Other components include surveys, SMS click tracking, advanced segmentation, and data sharing across Braze’s email, SMS, mobile, and web tools, and paid social channels.

Comcast-owned Freewheel has just launched a service that lets media buyers purchase audiences that are deduplicated across linear TV (the old-school channels you see on cable) and Connected TV (the things you access through streaming content services).  The service uses linear TV audiences in Comcast households as a base, and supplements it with ads on CTV services that have partnered with Comcast. It’s one small step to make CTV buying easier.

Grocery retailer Kroger continues to flesh out its retail media business.  Just added: an option to use the Pacvue, Skai, and Flywheel Digital ad management platforms to purchase product listing ads on Kroger ecommerce sites.  Before you ask: Flywheel Digital is unrelated to Comcast Flywheel.

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute Department of the Obvious.  The entire staff was trapped last night when someone forgot the key at an Escape the Room event, so I’m writing today’s newsletter.   First, this survey from The Harris Poll for NetReputation.com found 76% of consumers won’t buy products with a “one-star or less” online rating.  What’s not obvious is why the other 24% would.