CDP Institute

API connections are another way that companies can patch together something resembling a CDP (or do a lot of other, non-CDP things).  RapidAPI has made a business of helping companies to find, manage, and build APIs.  They just raised a $150 million Series D, having grown to more than four million users since they were founded in 2015.

Devs wanna dev, but business users have other priorities.  Almost three quarters (72%) of the in-store retail decision makers queried by Forrester for CX solution vendor Uberall said they’d favor a platform that unified separate point solutions to address marketing and CX needs.  Similar numbers felt their company did a less-than-good job of providing seamless customer journeys across all touchpoints.

Google Cloud has expanded its Contact Center AI service into its Contact Center AI Platform, which it calls an “out-of-box, end-to-end solution for the contact center”.   The technology integrates with existing CRM software to add call guidance, virtual agents, unified customer profiles, call routing, and workforce scheduling.  Think of it as a brain transplant that leaves the shell of your current contact center in place but replaces all its intelligence with Google.

Identity resolution vendor Neustar has partnered with cohort-based audience platform Permutive.  The deal will let advertisers use the Neustar Fabrick platform to analyze publisher cohort members and then select which cohorts to target through Permutive.   Advertisers get more information than if they just bought the cohorts alone, while publishers avoid exposing individual-level information.

Retail data analytics vendor NielsenIQ has acquired ciValue, which powers retail loyalty programs.  The deal will expand NielsenIQ’s abililty to execute personalized customer marketing programs.  Yes, there’s a trend to combine analytics and execution.  No, NielsenIQ isn’t the same company as Nielsen, the media measurement giant.

It’s one of those rare days when we have three items featuring CDP vendors, Dear Reader. First, here’s news that Treasure Data has signed a partnership with Sinch, which offers email, text, phone, and mobile chat communications services.  Treasure Data will give disconnected Sinch products access to a unified customer view.

Simon Data has expanded its already-deep relationship with Snowflake by joining the “Powered by Snowflake” program.  The deal will raise Simon’s visibility in the Snowflake community and provide additional technical support for Simon’s Snowflake-powered CDP.  There are only about forty companies listed in the “Powered by Snowflake” directory, including the Zeta Global CDP.

Speaking of Zeta, they just bought ArcaMax, which publishes free consumer newsletters.  Subscriber data will be used to extend Zeta’s identity graph and consumer intent data collection.  Zeta bought Apptness, a digital survey platform, for similar reasons last October.

There’s no need to worry about robots destroying the world when humans are doing it without any help.  So I’m less intrigued than I once was about Phrasee, which uses AI to create and optimize marketing email, SMS, Web and social media messages. But it’s still worth noting that they just sold a majority stake to capital D, a private equity fund manager based in London.  Expect more private equity deals now that the public markets have pulled back from all-time highs.

The CMO Survey from Duke Fuqua School of Business is an industry institution, now in its 28th edition since 2008.  The current report has lots of interesting data on privacy, trust, digital spend, and climate change, as well as the usual reports on marketing budgets.  Fun facts: 45% of marketers think privacy notices positively impact customers’ thoughts about their brands, even though 95% think consumers don’t read the disclosures very carefully.

Data compilers may be threatened by new privacy rules, but they also see an opportunity to serve marketers who are looking for new lists.  DrivenIQ provides auto dealers and retailers with tech to identify anonymous website visitors, in ways that are not entirely clear but they swear are fully privacy compliant.  They just bought Visitor Data Inc., which uses “double opted-in first-party data pixel technology” to match mobile device IDs with names, emails, phone numbers, and street addresses.

Tealium’s latest update is aimed at strengthening its position as a data-focused CDP.  New features include no-code data integration workflows, lookup tables outside of customer profiles, data synchronization with other systems, and real-time transformations on incoming data streams.  The company also has new connectors for conversion APIs from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others, and for messaging systems including Braze and Airship.