CDP Institute

Meanwhile, mobile ad platform Smaato reports that GDPR resulted in a sharp spike in costs for non-targeted mobile ad impressions, as advertisers shied away from targeting data they were not certain was collected with proper consent.

Another surprise: having customer service employees who are friendly and polite is more important to consumers than having agents know in advance who is calling or offering compensation when things go wrong, according to a survey from Customer Contact Week Digital.

By now, it’s not really surprising that people are losing interest in Facebook.

Let’s look at some research that contradicts what we think we know.

Deloitte has purchased the AI platform business of Magnetic, which runs optimized ad campaigns against a proprietary audience of more than 350 million user profiles. The acquisition is apparently limited to Magnetic’s technology and the product and engineering teams that support it. It’s not clear what happens to everyone else or whether Magnetic itself will continue to exist.

In another partial acquisition, cross-platform measurement vendor Branch has purchased attribution platform and team of TUNE. Branch maintains its own identity network, using a combination of cookies and device IDs to trace individuals across mobile platforms. TUNE is retaining its HasOffers business, which manages affiliate marketing programs.

Viant is yet another firm with a proprietary audience database, in its case 250 million consumers with deterministic cross-channel identifiers. They’ve just announced a B2B audience product based on data from Dun & Bradstreet, Transunion, Infogroup, HG and PeopleFinders. Marketers will be able to target business professionals based on title, vertical, company size, and location.

Digital experience platform Episerver has been purchased by private equity investor Insight Venture Parnters in a deal valued at $1.16 billion. Episerver combines ecommerce, Web content management, multi-channel marketing, and personalization. It’s another example of private investors buying of customer management systems that might otherwise have gone public.

Gimbal, which offers location-based advertising and marketing, has added cross-device attribution that correlates in-store visits with advertisements on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. The new offering is based in part on the cross-device advertising business that Gimbal bought from Drawbridge in May. Gimbal tracks user locations through code embedded in apps that users download. It reads GPS for general location and in-store beacons for precise location.

Factual also tracks device locations. It packages the data for analysis, advertising audiences, and location-based messaging. It just raised $42 million, bringing total funding to $104 million. They currently track about 300 million devices per month.

Salesforce has announced plans to add AI-based behavior scoring and AI-based insights into content and subject line engagement to its Pardot marketing automation system, which exists within its Sales cloud. Release is targeted for next February. Not too exciting but illustrates the steady expansion of AI in marketing products.

Ecommerce personalization platform Nosto has also added some features, including AI-powered segmentation, dynamic Web page personalization based on customer type, and access to more behavioral data. It’s all updated in real time, so everything adjusts to customer behaviors as they happen.