CDP Institute

Just-launched Accretive Media offers another version of marketing through public screens.

Analyzing data about customer location is quite different from publishing information about store locations. A study from Retail Systems Research finds untapped opportunity in customer location analytics, but also that retailers underestimate consumer privacy concerns. Lots of good insights.

Berlin-based location data company uberall has raised a $25 million Series B, bringing its total to just under $30 million. Uberall helps companies distribute accurate information about physical locations to online directories, maps, social networks and navigation services.

Data about store locations is most important to local marketers. A report from BIA/Kelsey finds that franchise marketers, which are mostly local businesses, concentrate their spending on locally-targeted media including direct mail, Facebook ads, Internet Yellow Pages, and community sponsorships. Most use their own marketing software and services but they still want the franchise parent to provide training in digital marketing.

Yesterday’s newsletter looked at marketers who treat consumers poorly. Today, let’s look at marketers getting poor treatment from ad channels. Start with research from image analysis vendor GumGum, which found that 67% of brands have seen at least one brand-unsafe ad placement. Actual consequences are limited: 47% had seen social media criticisms but just 2.3% had lost more than $100,000 in revenue. Nevertheless, nearly half (48%) said they’d adopted a technology to avoid these problems in the past year, bringing the total using such technology to 86%.

More broadly, a study by the TRUTH media agency found 79% of ad buyers are concerned about the level of transparency in programmatic advertising, with 37% citing ad fraud and 23% citing brand safety as specific issues. On the bright side: 70% said they were taking action to improve their confidence.

More good news: ad exchange OpenX reported that more than 50% of top publishers had adopted the ads.txt standard, which prevents fraud by listing companies that are authorized to sell their digital inventory. Ads.txt was developed by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and launched last May, so this is very fast adoption.

It goes without saying that building customer trust is essential for any company doing business online. Alas, it also often goes without doing. Email analytics vendor 250ok found that almost 90% of major online retailers don’t take basic steps to protect their customers from phishing attacks (where someone else sends an email claiming to be from the vendor to trick them into revealing personal information). Yikes!

More maltreatment: CRM vendor SuperOffice found that 62% of customers didn’t response to a customer service email. Just 20% answered questions on the first try while only 3% followed up to see if the customer was satisfied with their response.

Some better news: Google last week announced they’re making it easier for consumers to block retargeting ads. At least, that’s good news for consumers. Marketers might think otherwise.

Customer Data Platform and personalization vendor Evergage has purchased the MyBuys retail offer targeting business from online advertising company Magnetic. MyBuys merged with Magnetic in 2015. Evergage plans to move MyBuys customers onto the Evergage platform. It’s unusual to see one personalization company buy another. Sign of an overcrowded market, perhaps?

Web experience analytics company ContentSquare has raised a $42 million Series C, bringing total funding to $62 million. ContentSquare captures individual-level Web site behaviors and supports testing of alternative Web experiences. It works with only anonymous profiles.