CDP Institute

Google continues to offer features to adjust to the loss of third-party cookies.  Its latest is an enhanced conversion API that enables server-side identity matching:  brands tag their Web sites to capture the identities of people who convert and sends the identifiers to Google, which then reports which of those people Google has a record of serving an ad.  It’s third-party cookie-free but only works when consumers log in or otherwise identify themselves to sites that serve the ads.  CDP vendors Tealium and Twilio Segment have prebuilt connectors to simplify... Read More >

Google isn’t the only company trying to help advertisers identify their customers without cookies.  IPG subsidiary Kinesso has just launched “Kinesso Intelligent Identity” (a.k.a. “Kii” and pronounced “Key” – get it?).  Like other solutions, it relies on consumer-provided identifiers, although Kinesso says it “typically” finds 20% more matches across more channels, apparently because it has more identifiers to match against.  Your mileage may vary.

Lots of wheeling and dealing today, Dear Reader.  Closest to home, account-based marketing platform Terminus has purchased B2B CDP Zylotech.  It’s Terminus’ fifth acquisition, and will tie together the data silos that would otherwise result.   Price wasn’t announced.

Cloud communications vendor Sinch has expanded into email with the purchase of Pathwire, which owns email delivery companies Mailgun, Mailjet, and Email on Acid.  Price was $925 million in cash and $1 billion in Sinch stock, or about 14x Pathwire’s $132 million revenue.  The deal is Sinch’s fourth acquisition this year, including messaging platforms MessageMedia ($1.3 billion) and MessengerPeople ($55 million) and voice interconnection provider Inteliquent ($1.9 billion).

Not every deal is consummated.  Zoom announced that it will not complete its planned purchase of cloud contact center company Five9 after Five9’s shareholders rejected the all-stock offer.  The value was $14.7 billion when the agreement was announced in July, but Zoom’s stock price is now about 30% lower.

App store revenue streams keep springing new leaks. The latest is at Google Cloud marketplace, which will reportedly cut its revenue share from 20% to 3%. The Cloud marketplace is separate from the Play Store for android apps, which already reduced its revenue share in July, following a similar cut by Apple. Microsoft cut the Windows app store share of game purchase revenue in August, and just announced its app store will now allow third party storefronts.

The beleaguered walled garden vendors also face new competition for ad revenue, most notably from TikTok, which just passed one billion users. TikTok is moving quickly to help ad buyers come aboard, with a bucket of new features to connect brands with content creators, to create content and ads, and to measure results. They’ve also added partnerships with Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify for ad safety and fraud protection.

Retail is another battle front for BigTech. Walmart has been leading the charge but grocery chain Albertsons is now stepping to the fore. In a  flurry of moves, they’ve recently partnered with Pinterest to help shoppers plan meals, added shoppable livestream video from Firework, and teamed with DoorDash to let shoppers add restaurant orders to their grocery deliveries at no extra charge.

International Sloth Day – the traditional day for CDP product announcements – is several weeks away, but some vendors couldn’t wait. Amperity yesterday launched Amperity 4.0, which features real-time event streaming, self-optimizing predictive models, new connectors, more precise data access control, faster queries, and more.

CDP Blueshift also jumped the gun by announcing an extension of its journey orchestration to support all channels including commerce, sales, loyalty, and support.  The vendor has also added a new App Hub with 80+ integrations including direct mail, support, CRM, IVR, paid media, and other partners.

Switching to ad measurement: NielsenIQ has purchased omnichannel analytics vendor Data Impact and e-commerce purchase panel builder Rakuten Intelligence.  The deals will extend NielsenIQ’s own retail sales data to provide a more complete view ecommerce results. Separately, Accretive Media has launched an automated out-of-home ad measurement product that combines data on screen locations, consumer households, online and offline sales, foot traffic, website visits, and app downloads. Also: LoopMe has introduced PurchaseLoop Measurement, which uses surveys to measure brand lift across all digital channels in real time.

There’s nothing like a hefty CDP funding round to start the week.  We have that today courtesy of Optimove, which announced $75 million raise, bringing its total to $95 million.