CDP Institute

Money may be your favorite topic but replacing third-party data is a close second, right?  Epsilon is integrating its CORE ID identity graph and data with the Salesforce CDP, making it easier to unify customer records and expanding cross-channel reach.  Salesforce CDP already had a similar deal with Dentsu Merkle’s Merkury and may have others I don’t know about.

If you’re more of a soap opera fan, nothing beats the tribulations of BigTech.  Our latest episode finds us in South Korea, where a new law blocks Apple and Google from requiring that all sales go through their payment systems, which charge monopoly-level commissions.  Apple just settled a U.S. class action suit without losing that right, but how long will the maintain it and where?  Stay tuned.

We have (mostly) good news about adtech today, Dear Reader. We’ll start with a nice acquisition: brand safety vendor DoubleVerify is expanding in the European market by buying Meetrics, a Berlin-based firm with somewhat similar offerings.  Separately, DoubleVerify announced a partnership with Taboola, which will give Taboola’s advertisers more control over where their ads are placed.

Also cheery: this GeoEdge study finds that slightly more advertising said ad quality challenges got better (40%) than worse (35%) in the past year. By next year, more expect contextual fit to be their biggest challenge (51%) than brand safety (43%). This reverses years of increasing concern. Concerted industry efforts get credit, and let’s note that IAB Tech Lab has just launched a Transparency Center to further improve ad reliability.

A bit ambiguous: Moloco reports that mobile acquisition costs have grown by more than 200% for tracked users and 155% for non-tracked users since Apple introduced its enhanced privacy controls in iOS 14.5 in April.  That’s bad news for advertisers but good news for consumers whose privacy preferences are being respected.  Two thirds of ad bids (67.5%) now come from users who have opted out of tracking.

Welcome to “Trends Nobody Else Cares About Day” at CDP Institute. We’ll start with Gap Inc.’s acquisition of virtual fitting room app Drapr, which lets consumers try on clothes remotely. This one’s a two-fer: it illustrates the trend for retailers to buy tech companies rather than just using their products, and the trend of virtual dressing rooms, following Walmart’s purchase of Zeekit in May. Woot!

Next up: Point Pickup Technologies has purchased white label ecommerce platform GrocerKey. This highlights the trend of retailers taking control over last-mile delivery systems, rather than relying on United Parcel Service, Amazon, Uber, Instacart, or others. You’ll recall that WalMart opened its own delivery services to other retailers just last week.

Walmart doing stuff is apparently a trend in itself, but so far they seem to have missed the “data observability” market. We do have a $200 million Series C for data observability vendor Cribl. Just last week, Cribl competitor Monte Carlo raised a $60 million Series C of its own.

Apple has announced an agreement to settle a class action suit by U.S. developers that attacks its App Store policies. Critics were not impressed, since the deal preserves Apple’s requirement that payments be made through the App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut. The agreement is subject to court approval.

If you’re challenged by tracking 8,000 martech solutions, how would you feel about ten million? That’s how many technologies Iterate.ai has just announced it now covers, up from nine million a few months back. The company uses an AI engine to spot trends and grade start-up companies. They also offer a low-code platform with 465 pre-built modules that lets users assemble their own apps. Interesting.

Sastrify covers a mere 20,000+ solutions in its SaaS procurement platform. They offer a range of services to help small and mid-size companies catalog, track, select, buy, and monitor SaaS systems. Their news today is a $7 million seed round.

Customer Data Platforms are the highest technology investment priority for traditional retail marketers, listed in the top 3 by 78% in this CommerceNext survey for Yotpo.  Digital-first retailers, who struggle less with tech in general, rated attribution, messaging, and new ecommerce models ahead of CDP.  The survey also covers business goals, privacy compliance, and other non-CDP topics if you have other interests.