CDP Institute

Marketing isn’t the only department using AI.  In fact, personalized journeys are the sixth most common use of AI, well behind analytics, optimization and innovation, according to this Rackspace survey of (mostly) IT people.  Automated marketing campaigns ranks even further down the list.  The report finds 82% of companies are still exploring or struggling with AI and most barriers are related to data quality.

For better or worse, marketing has never been IT leaders’ main concern.  This IDG reports gives typical results, showing CIOs are most focused on security, IT operations, and aligning with business goals.   Marketers probably like it that way: the survey found that more marketing departments (34%) control their own IT spend than any other department.

Website personalization isn’t hurt much by the loss of third-party cookies, since it depends mostly on data collected directly within the Website itself. So don’t be surprised that site search and merchandising vendor Searchspring found 61% of its customers plan to invest in personalization this year. Also don’t be surprised that Searchspring just added a personalized recommendation module.

The loss of third-party cookies makes two things harder: identifying ad recipients and measuring ad results.  Both are important to dynamic creative optimization vendor Clinch, which relies on result measurement to fine-tune the ads it creates.  They’ve just done a deal with FourSquare to gather foot traffic data for the measurement side of things.

Plenty of companies hope their digital identity solution will be the standard replacement for third-party cookies.  ID graph vendor Tapad is hedging its bets with Switchboard, a service that will connect other companies’ identifiers.  Partners include TheTradeDesk, Amobee, Martin, Eyeota, ShareThis, Catalina, Unified ID, Lotame, Audigent, BritePool, ID5, RetargetlyIDx.  You’ll note a couple of big names are missing, including Neustar and LiveRamp.

Here’s more evidence that CPD usage increased during the pandemic. Twilio Segment reports that monthly API calls to its product more than doubled from nearly 500 million in December 2019 to over one trillion in December 2020.  Analytics, advertising, and warehouses were the top destinations by volume.  Lots more here to sink your teeth into.

Commsor plays the same data unification tune as a CDP but limits its inputs to online communities such as Slack, GitHub, and Twitter.  It then matches people active in more than one source to create its version of a unified profile.  The company just raised a $16 million Series A.  The product is still in beta.

Parse.ly gives content creators detailed insights into content performance and creates personalized content recommendations.  They were just bought by WPVIP, which offers an enterprise-oriented version of WordPress and is owned by WordPress.com parent Automattic.

Data onboarder LiveRamp has purchased DataFleets, which lets companies analyze each other’s customer data without actually sharing it.  The blanket label is federated analytics and explaining the details would use up my polysyllabic word quota for the week.  The bottom line is that LiveRamp can do more with their data without breaking privacy rules.

Do you sometimes suspect that I read through huge surveys just to cherry-pick the answers about CDPs?  Guilty as charged.  Fortella asked B2B marketers several interesting questions but what caught my eye was that top-performing marketers were 77% more likely to use a CDP than average or underperforming marketers.  Actual rates were 39% and 22%, giving a blended rate of 27%.

Outfunnel and Copper didn’t explicitly ask small business sales and marketing leaders about CDPs but they did find that easier integration heads the list of changes that would make their tech more useful.  So we’ll count that as a plus in the CDP column even though SMBs don’t buy many CDPs quite yet.

Data compiler V12 is also targeting consumers based on recent shopping behaviors.  Their new product is Vistas, which assigns people to one of five shopping types based on recent activities.  People are also assigned to consumer groups using conventional demographics.