CDP Institute

PureB2B also compiles business contact and company data for marketers.  They just launched PurePredict, which combines contact-level intent-based content consumption of known individuals; company-level intent based social media behaviors; and domain-level intent based on content consumption by anonymous individuals.  If that’s not enough, the company says it will add other types of intent data in the future.

Obnoxious behavior from Facebook is no surprise but we still should mention that they just blocked their users from all legitimate Australian news sources. Lies are still welcome. It’s part of Facebook’s fight against a proposal that they pay news companies for using the information. Google also dislikes the idea but chose to cut a global deal with News Corp.

Most of the marketing industry has gotten past the denial and anger stages of reacting to Apple’s tighter privacy policies and is moving on to bargaining.  AppsFlyer’s contribution is SK360, which restores some control by collecting campaign information that Apple’s SKAdNetwork sends to ad networks.  AppsFlyer e just announced a further extension, PredictSK, that predicts campaign performance.  Look for other measurement vendors to offer similar support in these trying times.

Email optimization vendor Validity has sorrows of its own: best practices including list hygiene, deliverability optimization, and A/B testing were used less last year than the year before.  High-performing companies were more likely to use most tools although AI was an intriguing exception: it was actually more common among marketers with lower inbox placement rates.

Engagement analytics firm Verint also has some sad news: half the companies it surveyed still feel ill-prepared to handle COVID-related disruptions and 82% expect managing engagement will get harder in 2021.  AI takes some lumps in this survey too: while 78% of companies have made moderate-to-high investment in AI, just 18% report it has been highly useful in managing change.

With COVID infections down in many places and mass vaccinations under way, it might soon be time to start worrying again about AI taking your job.  For example, let’s say your job is to monitor campaign performance in the ClickDimensions marketing platform, which attaches to Microsoft Dynamics 365.  Maybe you should polish up that resume, since ClickDimensions just bought Eletype, which does that automatically and reports its findings through Microsoft Teams or Slack.

Perhaps you analyze prospect information in the Copper CRM system.  They just bought engagement analytics platform Sherlock to do that for you.  The stated goal is to save users work, not to replace them, but that’s just what they would say, isn’t it?

Think you’re safe because you work in healthcare? Think again: Insightin Health combines “medical, clinical, cognitive, and social determinants of health to recommend the next best action for each health plan member” in personalized messages. They just raised a $12 million Series A, bringing total funding to $15.5 million.

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at CDP Institute’s Department of the Obvious.  The office is officially closed today but I snuck down from my cot in the attic to write this.  First we have a survey from Searchspring that found online sales grew during 2020 and most companies expect them to grow further in 2021.  Slightly less obvious: 61% will invest in ecommerce personalization this year.

This study from Stratix is a fountain of obviousness: just over 70% of companies lost revenue due to COVID; just under 70% had employees work from home; and priorities shifted to contactless technology and wearables.  Most delightfully obvious of all: companies with a stronger IT foundation were most able to adapt to the new situation.

Finally, we have a report that hate speech and harmful content on Facebook fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2020.  You may not think that’s obvious, but the report was produced by Facebook itself so it must be true.

Marketers mostly use AI systems to recommend content, but AI also plays a growing role in data management.  Case in point: data governance vendor Collibra recently bought OwlDQ, which uses machine learning to classify the contents of unknown data sources.  It’s especially helpful at finding customer data so companies can comply with privacy regulations.