CDP Institute

Many people hope first party will fill the gap left by vanishing third party data. Meredith is boarding that bus with a new Data Studio that will use their first party data – holding oodles of insights on 94% of U.S. women – for audience targeting, research, and matching against a company’s own first party data.

Want more news about data-based research? Here’s another twofer. Dynata, which builds research panels drawing on more than 62 million consumer and business profiles, just bought Sharpr, which helps companies share research results internally. And LoopMe, which runs digital ad campaigns and surveys consumers to see the impact on brand attitudes, announced they’re now offering near-real-time feedback on connected TV campaigns. They have data on 90 million U.S. households and 250 million devices.

Venture funding has remained fairly steady despite the pandemic, according to this report from KPMG Private Enterprise. I couldn’t quite reconcile the graphs, which seem to show a modest downturn, with the words, which say activity is well ahead of 2019. It’s more clear that capital is more available for late-stage companies than new ones.

What’s really clear is the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation programs. This Twilio study found 79% of companies had increased their digital transformation budget and 92% are likely to add new digital communication channels. The average acceleration was estimated at six years.

This Fujitsu study of retail IT managers also finds growth in digital transformation budgets.  Data is from February, so this might have changed.  Alas, marketing ranks far behind other departments in transformation progress. Insult to injury: respondents said transformation in the finance department had as much impact on revenue as changes in marketing.

We have lots of surveys today, Dear Reader. We’ll start with a pair from Jamie in our Department of the Obvious. Conviva reports that streaming media consumption increased when people were trapped at home. The American Customer Satisfaction Index confirms that and adds it made them cranky: satisfaction with search engines, internet news and social media all fell. No prize for guessing that social media rates the worst on privacy.

Looking at consumer attitudes more broadly, Merkle offers a very interesting chart plotting how consumers rate the value vs invasiveness of different kinds of messages. They also report that quality, price, reputation, service, and brand loyalty all rank ahead of personalization as reasons to buy. Catalyst Digital and Kantar found that ecommerce buyers put convenience, shopability, and assortment ahead of price, perhaps reflecting supply concerns during the pandemic. Personalization wasn’t on the list.

Circling back to privacy, KPMG found that 68% of U.S. consumers don’t trust companies to sell personal data in an ethical way. Ponemon Institute found 74% of consumers feel they have no control over personal data collected about them, 66% feel they’ve received ads targeted on search behavior or private information, and 64% think it’s creepy when that happens. Both reports found a majority of consumers want more government regulation of how their data is used.

You might think that CMOs losing control of tech budgets is bad news. But when CMO found CMOs owning at least 90% of their tech budget fell to 21% from 38% a year ago, their sunny interpretation was that martech is now a higher corporate priority. They didn’t comment on the drop in CDP investment priority from sixth to 14th. Lots more here of interest.

Gartner has also been polling CMOs. They found brand strategy has vaulted from ninth to first on the list of strategic capabilities, while martech has fallen slightly from sixth to seventh. They also found that 44% of CMOs are facing budget cuts due to the pandemic, a result similar to other surveys.

Definitely on the bright side, Optimove has released “self-optimizing journeys”, which autonomously determines the next best action for each individual customer. While next best action isn’t new, Optimove says its approach looks beyond short-term metrics to maximize lifetime value. Good stuff.

It’s become a cliché to say that loss of third party data makes first party data more important. This IAB study supports the notion, finding that spend on data management, including CDPs, grew 9.8% in 2019 to reach $5.5 billion while spend on third party data grew only 6.1% to reach $11.9 billion. Both are down in 2020 due to the pandemic, which has also replaced privacy regulation as marketers’ top concern.