CDP Institute

Here’s a de-acquisition story just to mix things up: the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority has ordered Meta, owner of Facebook, to reverse last year’s purchase of animated GIF distributor Giphy.  The Authority felt the deal reduced potential competition for ad sales and could let Facebook/Meta reduce other competitors’ access to Giphy GIFs or demand more data from them.  It’s one more sign that regulators everywhere are turning on Meta/Facebook after years of neglect.

Regulators are still mostly ignoring bias in Artificial Intelligence, although we hear scattered rumblings. This report from RELX raises the alarm: 65% of executives say their current AI systems are biased. For added background, check out this 71-page introduction to the topic from the IAB.

Digital experience platform Optimizely is further expanding its scope with a deal to buy Welcome, which provides content management, digital asset management, and marketing resource management.  You may recall that Optimizely itself was purchased in September 2020 by Episerver, which then adopted the Optimizely name.  And who could forget that they bought the Zaius CDP in March 2021?

Cross-channel marketing platform and CDP vendor Cordial has expanded its data management capabilities.  Major enhancements enable business users to integrate new data sources without IT support, extend data retention options, and build custom predictive models and marketing automation triggers.

Self-service is in style.  Citizen API builders can now use a no-code interface to add new data sources to the Celebrus CDP.  Celebrus has also added more precise tracking of how users interact with content, enabling more accurate machine learning models for decisions and measurement.

As the festive season ramps up, perhaps we should think of corporate acquisitions as a B2B self-gift.  In that light, a pair of private equity firms have treated themselves to SALESmanago, a Poland-based but globally-sold CDP and marketing automation platform.  They claim 2,500 clients, which are mostly small businesses but include some big enterprises.  Price is undisclosed but over $100 million.

Agency holding company WPP has bought itself Cloud Commerce Group, which handles order processing, shipping, and other back-office functions for ecommerce platforms and marketplaces. It integrates with ecommerce systems like Magento and Shopify, marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy, and shippers like UPS and Fedex.   Agency companies like WPP didn’t used to own a lot of technology but that is changing.  Cloud Commerce will join WPP’s Wunderman Thompson Commerce group.

MeritB2B has its roots in B2B marketing lists but they too have expanded into technology and services.  They just acquired True Influence, which collects B2B buyer intent signals and provides related account-based marketing and demand generation services.

We haven’t written much about the tribulations of Nielsen’s core media measurement business, which would make a fine soap opera of its own.  The latest plot twist has an “Empire strikes back” vibe, with Nielsen announcing plans to convert its much-maligned TV audience measurements into something fashionably cross-platform and people based.  Stay tuned.

Ecommerce checkout platform Bolt has purchased Tipser, whose technology converts any “digital surface” into a purchasing opportunity.  You can almost see them drooling as they describe the ability to shop in “an online publication, a mobile marketplace, a price comparison site, a social media platform, or a search engine” using Tipser’s “turn-key publisher marketplaces, touchless merchant integrations, and headless implementation capabilities”.  Pinch me so I know I’m not dreaming.

A majority (58%) of email marketers say better access to data would “greatly” improve their ability to run personalized campaings, according to this Simon Data survey.  More than one-third say their IT team (34%) and data team (40%) is involved in the campaign process.  Perhaps as a result, nearly half (47% say it takes at least four days to get the information they need.

Adverx has just raised $14.5 million for “Customer Relationship Advertising,” which certainly sounds intriguing.  What they do is to generats personalized ads for individuals targeted by business-to-business sales teams, and then maks those ads “passively ‘follow’ each salesperson’s current clients and prospects (pulled from the CRM) as they browse the web and social media”.  Annoying and creepy and it probably works.