CDP Institute

Finally, we have views on “big data” from senior data and analytics executives polled by NewVantage Partners. Their top objective for big data and AI investments was analytics – no surprise given the audience – although customer experience did rank second, ahead of lower costs, innovation, and speed to market. More important: by far the biggest challenges to being data-driven were people (49%) and process (32%). Just 19% cited technology. Most surveys give a similar answer but it’s still easy to forget.

The year is young, but I think there’s been a noticeable drop-off in news about artificial intelligence.

Will consumers exercise their rights under GDPR? One reason to doubt is they haven’t done much to protect themselves against more pressing threats such as cybersecurity. This study from security vendor McAfee found that 63% of consumers worry about identity theft if their home networks is breached but 41% don’t bother to change default passwords on new devices right away. In fact, 34% don’t limit access to their home network at all. Annoyingly, McAfee only released an infographic rather than the full research.

But businesses need to prepare for GDPR regardless of how consumers eventually react. This piece in DigiDay says Data Management Platforms in particular will need massive changes, ultimately shifting from anonymous third party data to identified first party data. That will land them squarely in Customer Data Platform territory, he noted with a smirk.

The biggest trend we found in our just-released CDP Industry Update was CDPs that include analytics and customer engagement. Right on cue, Rubikloud Technologies has raised $37 million for a system that assembles retailers’ customer data and then applies machine learning to plan promotions and target customer messages. It also provides AI-based applications outside of marketing. We can’t call them a CDP since they don’t seem to open their data to other systems. But the Toronto-based firm is chasing the same puck.

If you want a trend outside of CDPs, try “data marketplace”. We’ve recently seen them from Sonobi, Kochava, Narrative I/O, and IOTA Foundation. Most aggregate individual-level data from multiple sources to build online advertising audiences. This gives marketers alternatives to the data that Facebook, Amazon, Google and others hoard inside their walled gardens. Datonics is another player in the space. They just announced their data will be available in Neustar’s Identity Data Management Platform.

Customer Data Platform vendor BlueVenn has acquired LEAP media solutions, which builds marketing databases and runs marketing programs for U.S. media companies. LEAP has long used BlueVenn technology. It’s another example of CDP vendors adding more services.

Dentsu-owned marketing agency Merkle has purchased loyalty and promotion agency HelloWorld, which combines proprietary technology with strategy and execution services. Imagine a two by two matrix of marketing companies that offer technology, agency services, neither or both. Traditional agencies offer only services; traditional martech companies offer only technology. Firms like Merkle and HelloWorld do both. It’s not clear who does neither – perhaps consultants and newsletter writers.

Customer Data Platforms are mostly technology providers, although they offer just enough services to set up their systems and keep them running. Stardog is pure technology: it gives IT experts a “knowledge graph” to connect disparate information sources. Firms like Stardog matter to marketers because they reduce costs for CDP vendors or others who adopt their technology. Stardog just added $3 million to its Series A financing, raising the total to $9 million.

For a broader view of new data technologies, here’s a “big data” survey from Syncsort. It’s always sobering to be reminded that IT professionals care more about business productivity and cost reductions than marketing or customer experience. For example: “data blending”, which is what CDPs do, ranked sixth on their list of data lake use cases. That’s why marketers buy CDPs for themselves.

Is there a prize for first acquisition of the year? If so, Account Based Marketing vendor Terminus just won it by announcing they’re buying BrightFunnel, which specializes in B2B marketing analytics and attribution. It’s pretty far from Terminus’ core business in targeted display ads, which just shows the extent of their ambition to become a full service B2B marketing platform.

There’s no doubt that B2B analytics are a challenge. Content marketing platform Conductor found that just half of marketers (51%) said they could easily measure the results of their global marketing efforts. Slightly more (56%) are overwhelmed by the amount of data their systems generate when they try to extract insights. Just 3% have a single dashboard to measure overall marketing performance while 29% have five or more.