CDP Institute

Microsoft will rely on Integral Ad Science to block inappropriate content across Microsoft Web sites including MSN, Outlook.com, and Microsoft Edge. It’s IAS’s second big win in a week, following news that Verizon Media will use IAS to promote brand safety and improve contextual targeting. Brand safety is an increasing concern among advertisers.

In our on-going campaign to convince you that consumers care more about convenience than personalization, here’s a study for CallMiner by CCW Digital. They found the most important attributes of customer service are accurate information and resolution (42%) and speed and efficiency (33%). Proving they know you was dead last at 2%. Lots more here if you want to know what consumers say makes a good experience.

I’ve been kind of hoping that a citizen newsletter editor would take over some of my work here, but so far, no luck. Citizen developers are getting more support from Google, which has just released an Airtable-like system named, um, Tables. It lets non-programmers define processes, share data, and do other stuff that used to require a highly trained professional.

There are probably cool tools that let citizens create 3D, augmented reality, virtual reality, and other types of “immersive” content. Maybe Snapchat filters qualify. However it’s created, this Accenture survey finds that 61% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy from brands that offer immersive content and 64% of leading consumer brands are starting to build it. One dark cloud: 57% of consumers are concerned about how immersive tech uses their personal data.

Everyone’s favorite example of spooky personalization is Minority Report, and particularly the mall scene where advertising posters talk to specific individuals. I though that had finally happened when I saw that Quotient was offering in-store digital ads targeted with “proprietary shopper intent data and exclusive shopper purchase data”. But it turns out they’re just analyzing that data and then targeting locations that are most likely to attract particular audiences, not individuals. So at least one dystopian nightmare hasn’t come true in 2020. Yet.

CDP CrossEngage is merging with predictive analytics vendor GPredictive, in a deal that also adds €6.5 million ($7.6 million) in new venture funding. The combined firms will operate under the CrossEngage brand although both products will still be sold separately and top managers from both firms will remain at the company.

Messaging company Airship has acquired ReplyBuy, which enables two-way conversations and payments over SMS. Airship plans to add commerce capabilities to all its channels. Perhaps you’ve heard that ecommerce has grown rapidly this year.

Third-party cookies may be vanishing but Lotame still sells third-party data enrichment. They’ve just partnered with ad platform Amobee, which has its own identity graph, to target Lotame audience segments on major social platforms.

We have two big funding announcements today: a $230 million Series D for personalized text messaging platform Attentive and $300 million for marketplace platform Mirakl. But haven’t seemed interested in such things recently, Dear Reader, so let’s instead look at this Merkle survey on customer engagement technology. Lots of fun facts including: 67% prefer best-of-breed vs a single-stack architecture; 79% prefer custom-built to off-the-shelf systems; and 26% have API access to a central customer file. Download for more.

Our friends at Gartner have their own new survey, this time about marketing organizations. Two-third of companies said they have a fully or mostly centralized marketing organization; 49% have shared services groups; and a growing fraction (now 27%) have a functional organization, compared with industry (20%), brand (19%), channel (20%) or geographic (14%) organizations. Oh, and companies use agile project management are more effective at everything.

Forrester analysts have also been hard at work, with a Google-sponsored study finding that better use of data and analytics is a top-5 priority for 63% of marketers and siloes are the top data challenge (57%). Fewer than half (42%) have a cross-platform view of Web and app analytics, which might seem like a little or a lot. But 84% consider cross-platform analytics critical or very important, so let’s call that glass half empty.

Salesforce has announced Digital 360, a combination of components from Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud plus new bits including its long-awaited CDP, named Customer 360 Audiences. General availability for Audiences is set for October.