CDP Institute

CDP Exponea announced API-level integration with data quality and enrichment services from Acxiom.  The deal isn’t unique: Acxiom also lists integrations with Adobe, Boxever, Tealium, and Treasure Data.  But it’s still worth noting that tighter integration of CDPs and third party data vendors is becoming more common.  You may recall that Exponea was purchased last month by recommendation engine vendor Bloomreach.

Data analytics vendor Actian has released Customer 360 Solution, which it doesn’t call a CDP but still sounds like one.  The new solution loads data from disparate sources into Actian’s high-speed Avalanche database, generates insights, and shares the results with customer-facing systems.  The company says business users can set up the data connections without writing code.

It might be a sin to enjoy seeing Facebook attacked from all sides, but it’s worth it.  Having lost the battle against arbitration on news content payments to Australian publishers, the company now faces a joint push from Microsoft and major European publishers for similar rules.Meanwhile, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. legislators has proposed letting small publishers jointly negotiate news content payments without facing antitrust penalties.

I’m sure there’s a reason that Tel Aviv-based Web analytics start-up Oribi named itself after a small African antelope, although it might simply be an excuse to make hoodies with horns.  Their fashion sense extends to their product positioning, which adds trendy no-code bling to Web analytics.  The company just raised a $15.5 million Series B, bringing total funding to $27.9 million.

As adtech vendors scramble for cookie substitutes, it’s easy to confuse ID systems used for targeting and systems for attribution.  The big difference is that targeting systems need to identify as many people as possible while attribution systems can use a sample.  Nielsen’s ID resolution system, announced last November, is aimed squarely at attribution: it uses first party data such as email addresses and device IDs to build a comprehensive picture of behaviors for a limited set of people and then validates the results against Nielsen panel data.  They just... Read More >

Fifty seven percent of companies polled in this Merkle study are personalizing experiences in at least five channels and 59% have a consolidated customer profile.  But consumers are not impressed: just 35% say that marketing and advertising meets their needs.  Lots more here on CDP adoption, who’s in charge of CX, and obstacles to using data.

Investors are clearly impressed with Highspot.  The sales enablement company just raised a $200 million Series E, doubling its previous total of $197 million and valuing the company at $2.3 billion.  Highspot says that usage also doubled from 2019 to 2020.

Low-code development platform Creatio also has new money, taking $68 million in its first round ever. In addition to its development tools, Creatio offers a prebuilt CRM with marketing, sales, and service systems including a unified customer database. Users can modify these to their hearts’ content.

Like an imminent hanging, the approaching enforcement of Apple’s new privacy rules has concentrated marketers’ minds on adjusting to the situation rather than waiting to be rescued by an-as-unbuilt universal identifier. We wrote last week about AppsFlyer’s approach. Now we also have the Post-IDFA Alliance, a consortium of mobile adtech firms offering a resource center with helpful advice and perhaps a little sympathy. Facebook has also launched a site on the topic. Of course, Facebook just got caught knowingly publishing inflated audience data, so examine that gift horse very carefully.

Cisco has completed its $730 million acquisition of customer experience platform IMImobile.  The deal, announced last December, marks a major expansion of Cisco’s footprint in customer-facing systems.  Cisco already owns Webex, Voicea, and Cloudcherry but lacks a CDP.  So far.

CDPs complement, not replace, other martech systems, according to this Treasure Data survey.  Nearly all (95%) of CDP users also have a CRM system, 89% have a DMP, and 79% of a data warehouse or data lake.  Download to learn about CDP use cases, benefits, data sources, and more.

Amazon has purchased Selz, a small business ecommerce and marketing system that competes with Shopify.  It’s a logical step on Amazon’s path to world domination.  The deal happened last month but no one noticed until recently.