CDP Institute

The CDP Institute has published a draft list of features to use in categorizing CDP vendors. The classification is an attempt to reduce confusion about what makes a CDP and how CDP vendors differ. Comments are welcome.

There’s already been plenty of comment on Facebook’s plan to refocus the news feed on personal messages. My take is it’s a clever defensive move to relinquish power over public opinion before national governments grab the company to secure that power for themselves. After all, being nationalized is bad for business and Facebook’s only real purpose is to make money. As it should be.

News that Facebook is creating its own video chat device was mostly overshadowed by the news feed change. The most intriguing rumor is the device will include facial recognition software, potentially letting Facebook track every user behavior without any user effort. There’s no reason to think anyone at Facebook even realizes this could be problematic. But let’s not single out Facebook: voice recognition means that every voice-activated device from Apple, Amazon, Google, and others has the same Big Brother potential.

In fact, Facebook may be less dangerous than the others precisely because Facebook is so obvious about what they’re doing.

Artificial intelligence may no longer be a guaranteed attention getter, but it still adds value. Adtech vendor Magnetic has launched an AI-driven media buying platform that it says completely automates campaign execution from audience selection to bidding and optimization. Audiences are drawn from Magnetic’s 260 million consumer profiles and the AI screens for fraud when placing bids. Magnetic says campaigns using the automated system have performed 2 to 10 times better than manual campaigns. Also, media buyers’ time is cut at least by half.

It’s no accident that Magnetic’s description of their automated product includes fraud prevention. Ad fraud is a big problem. This Forrester study, sponsored by AppsFlyer, says mobile ad fraud is especially problematic because of mobile is growing so quickly and audience data is limited. While 92% of respondents said that mobile ad fraud prevention is a high or critical priority, just 19% had systematic fraud prevention in place.

We haven’t heard much yet about fraud in addressable TV ads but you can bet it’s coming.

The National Retail Federation’s big trade show kicked off in New York yesterday. This would usually generate a flood of news but so far it’s more of a trickle. Here’s one item from a CDP vendor: Evergage announced an alliance with in-store tech vendor One Step Retail Solutions and retail marketing agency Sophelle. They’ll use Evergage’s data unification and real-time personalization to gather data from One Step systems and to provide those systems with personalized messages.

Retail-focused CDP AgilOne also made an announcement at NRF. They highlighted enhancements including a new high-speed data query tool, a customer privacy API to comply with GDPR and other requirements, and easier access to real time contextual information by in-store systems and other customer-facing applications.

Most of the news from NRF seemed to be about in-store systems – not especially surprising, but where were artificial intelligence or unified online/offline experience? Instead we have point of sale marketing specialist Ecrebo announcing a new platform to deliver targeted offers at checkout via printed receipts, digital receipts, or customer-facing screens. Ecrebo bases its targeting on a central database that combines transactions and other data from all channels, so it does look a bit like a CDP. Not that I’m obsessed.

And again: this study by retail behavior tracking vendor Euclid found that brands taking policy positions is clearly a bad idea. Seventy-eight percent of consumers said companies should avoid public statements that take a political stance, while just 22% felt companies have an obligation to do so. Just 16% said they buy from a company regardless of what it says or does. The study also looks at other factors related to store purchases.

So if brands shouldn’t take policy positions, how about hiring influencers who probably have strong opinions of their own? Well, there’s certainly the risk of an influencer going off the rails but most followers presumably agree with them. This Nielsen study doesn’t address risk but did find that influencer marketing is better than TV commercials at generating engagement and improving brand metrics. TV is still best at building awareness.