CDP Institute

This story is more important but less interesting: Beyond Identity has launched with the promise to replace passwords while increasing security. It works by giving each device a highly secure encryption key, which applications use to authenticate identity through API or SDK connections. Credibility comes from the company founders, who are industry pioneers Jim Clark (Netscape and Silicon Graphics) and TJ Jermoluk (@Home Network). That, and $30 million in funding.

Back to surveys. TEKsystems found that making improving customer experience is the top goal for digital transformation programs (72%), making information accessible across the organization is the most important action for success (61%), and integration of technology, systems and platforms is the most common benefit (46%). They don’t mention Customer Data Platforms but these are all CDP memes.

In case you’re wondering, Department of the Obvious Senior Intern Jamie is safely sheltering in the attic. But he still keeps an eye on industry news and just shared this survey from marketing agency Element-R Partners, which found that 74% of marketers had changed or reduced activities during the pandemic. A majority (61%) were somewhat or highly annoyed by business-as-usual messages.

Apple and Google are cooperating on a contact tracking system to help slow coronavirus’ spread. What’s most interesting is that they’re following good privacy practices by not building a central registry of personal behaviors and by reaching people without learning their identities. So, yes, privacy is possible when developers make it priority.

Lest you get all warm and fuzzy about Google and Apple’s noble efforts, this Trustpilot study reminds us that being socially responsible is good business. They found 66% of online shoppers will pay (slightly) more to buy from a socially responsible firm and 90% have chosen not to buy from a company because of its bad reputation. Jamie provided this one too.

Many advertisers are avoiding coronavirus-related stories. But 62% of ads flagged by keyword-based ad blocking are actually brand safe, according to adtech vendor GumGum. This matters because publishers earn less revenue and advertisers miss good media buys.

Ad viewability is another important thing that’s tricky to measure. Content discovery vendor Taboola, which places those bizarre-but-enticing “paid content” stories on many Web sites, has partnered with analytics vendor Moat to charge for video ads based on viewability or completed views rather than clicks. Problem solved.

Attribution is the mother of all measurement challenges. Neustar and iSpot.tv have connected their data to make it a little easier. iSpot tracks ad views across 12 million opted-in smart TVs and lets clients add their own information including retail sales. Neustar is integrating iSpot data with its own consumer information, enabling advertisers to build richer audience profiles and attribution analyses. Problem not quite solved but it’s one more piece of the puzzle.

Just 20% of marketers have real-time or daily access to cross-channel marketing performance data, according this study from Salesforce’s Datorama. Only 33% say they have “excellent” marketing data integration and management. No surprise here but it’s why we keep reporting on data integration technologies.

On a cheerier note: the Brand Safety Institute and Local Media Consortium have developed a Local News Advertising Whitelist to identify brand-safe local media outlets. The idea is to help revenue-starved local media attract more programmatic ad buys from national advertisers.

As it happens, brand risk fell in the second half of last year, according to Integral Ad Science. Viewability was up but fraud results were mixed: ad fraud rates rose for campaigns that were not optimized to prevent fraud and were roughly stable for campaigns that were.

You weren’t terribly interested in Tuesday’s news about the merger of location data collectors Factual and Foursquare, Dear Reader. So I’m not sure you’ll care much that PlaceIQ is buying FreckleIOT. But it’s still worth paying attention: location data plays an increasing role in personalized customer experience and lets marketers measure real-word campaign impacts.