CDP Institute

B2B predictive analytics vendor Infer has been sold to ESW Capital, which will fold it into ESW’s Ignite Technologies affiliate. Infer assembles business profiles by scanning the Web for news and company information, and combines these with clients’ own marketing automation and CRM data. ESW is on a martech buying spree, having also purchased Infobright DB, Jive, ThinkVine, Placeable and FirstRain in the past year.

We can’t discuss customer data without mentioning privacy.

We saw last Friday that Tylenol is eager to let you know they’re watching your every move. The folks at Acxiom-owned LiveRamp are more discreet even though their ambition is broader: nothing less than a “universal, people-based identifier” to track people across all devices in all media. They’ve just made their IdentityLink IDs available to ad agencies, completing a plan that has already made them available to brands, technology platforms, data owners, and publishers.

Of course, a truly complete view of each customer takes more than buying some data from LiveRamp. To give an idea of the challenge: a CMO Council survey for SAP Hybris found just 23% of marketing leaders have a comprehensive view of customer data from across their organization. Lack of actionable insights from data and analytics was the number one roadblock to delivering a seamless customer experience.

Look, I’m as tired as you are of reading about artificial intelligence. But unless you want three articles about chatbot funding (here, here, and here), you’ll probably appreciate hearing about Protagonist, a firm that says it analyzes Web data with AI to uncover the stories that customers want to hear and how to deliver them. The technology originated at the White House and National Security Council, which may or may not add to their credibility.

One problem with letting a computer decide which stories are effective is it may not care whether those stories are also true. Come to think of it, that’s a problem with people too. Breaking Data Corp. has an app to help: its technology scans the Web for news events, verifies them, and flags fake news. Or so says their press release.

How about finding ideas the old fashioned way: by stealing them? Email deliverability experts Return Path have just enhanced their competitive intelligence tool with a database of millions of emails sorted by subject line, industry, and campaign type. The database also shows performance metrics so marketers can see which ideas are worth, shall we say, learning from.

Customer Data Platform vendor ActionIQ has closed a $30 million Series B financing, bringing its total raise to $45 million. Founded in 2014, ActionIQ is the youngest CDP to break the $40 million funding mark.

More funding news: NYIAX has closed a $5.6 million seed round for their advertising contract futures exchange. If advertising contract futures don’t excite you, how about the fact that NYIAX uses blockchain? I thought so.

And still more about money: companies will spend $4.7 billion on customer journey analytics software and services in 2017, says palindromically-named Markets and Markets. They expect the industry to reach $12.2 billion by 2022. Before you faint at the thought of all that mapping software, read the fine print: the estimate includes all customer segmentation, targeting, behavior analysis, brand management, campaign management and product management systems. Details will cost you $5,650.

This week’s articles have mostly been about industry trends, so let’s finish in the same vein with a look at threats to marketers.

Tired of worrying about Facebook and Google? Here’s a new threat: IT departments taking control of marketing. Seems far fetched? Then check out this announcement from AppDynamics, which describes “moving from performance monitoring and technical metrics to a world of predictively driving business outcomes across the entire digital experience” complete with unified customer journeys. They aren’t shy about their goal: “CIOs were elevated from servicing the business to driving it.” Now you know what your CIO is really thinking about when he looks bored in your meetings.