CDP Institute

Berlin-based zenloop also uses machine learning to understand customer feedback, although its more along the lines of using Net Promoter Score feedback to identify actions that will reduce customer churn. They just raised $6 million, their first public funding.

Want still more feedback? InMoment creates a unified view with survey, panel, and review feedback from customers and employees. They just added Market Experience Cloud, which adds information such as campaign results, product performance, and competitive activities.

Data management vendor Informatica has purchased AllSight, which specializes in customer data collection, unification, and analysis. The deal lets Informatica move beyond building a “golden record” of customer attributes to creating a complete profile including unstructured data, transactions, and other detailed information. It’s a nice illustration of the difference between Master Data Management and Customer Data Platforms.

Cloud data management platform Odaseva announced a $11.7 million Series A, bringing total funding to $14 million. Odaseva automates cloud-to-cloud transfers, data backup, privacy compliance, and breach detection. It’s especially well connected to the Salesforce cloud.

Organizational note: we’ve assigned “Facebook is evil” news to our Department of the Obvious, which in hindsight is where it belongs. Department Intern Jamie has already found two suitably obvious items: Facebook’s fact checking operation is ineffective and letting users clear their behavior history could make Facebook ad targeting less effective. More to come, for sure.

IgnitionOne, a CDP with broad analytical and personalization functions, has added an AI-driven ability to predict the performance of advertising creative. Predictions are based on past performance of content that IgnitionOne’s visual recognition engine has classified as similar. Interesting.

LiveRamp, working hard to make its cross-channel identity graph an industry standard, is giving programmatic bidding platforms free access to its people-based identifier. It already gives free access to supply-side (publisher) platforms via the Advertising ID Consortium. The result should be more reliable tracking of individuals, especially as cookies fade from the scene. This may not please privacy advocates but LiveRamp argues it allows more reliable opt-outs.

Bored with display ads? Podcasting is arguably the hottest new medium right now, although voice and video advocates might differ. That would be a fun mud-wrestling match but I digress. Voxnest has just launched what it says is the first marketplace for in-audio advertising inventory, making it easier to purchase large, demographically-targeted podcast audiences. No individually-targeted ads here. Yet.

Testing platform Optimizely has added an ability to integrate external behavioral data, giving users a more complete view of test impacts. The new feature tracks the tests received by each individual and then ingests data from other systems about their behaviors. This breezily assumes that your other systems can give Optimizely a personal identifier to tie everything together. Easier said than done.

UserTesting assembles online panels of people who comment on test products and features. They’ve just added an option to run tests on mobile devices in addition to desktop systems. Compared with Optimizely, it’s the difference between asking someone what they think and watching what they do.

The difference between asking and watching is also on the minds of the digital marketing trade group IAB, which is testifying in Washington in favor of replacing state regulation with a federal privacy law. Their current position is that asking consumers for consent is just way too pesky, or, as they colorfully describe it, creates “rampant over-notification leading to consent fatigue in consumers and creating an indifference to important notices regarding their privacy”. IAB would rather rely on Congress to decide what’s permitted because, well, everybody trusts Congress.

Turbo Systems has launched “the first universal, no-code engagement platform for the enterprise”. According to the company, it has the “potential to disrupt the very nature of how applications are built, managed, and consumed” by enabling users with ”zero developer expertise” to create “dynamic, highly personalized enterprise applications” on top of existing ERP, CRM, and human resources systems. I’m skeptical. Then again, the company has raised $8 million to fund the revolution.