CDP Institute

Google is introducing a first-party data solution for analytics users, currently in beta testing, called Customer Match. When a website collects customer identifiers, such as email addresses and phone numbers, these automatically flow into Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to use in remarketing audiences across Google ad platforms. By contrast, Customer Match for Google Ads requires uploading identifiers in CSV files.

Here’s more good news for GA4 users: MetaRouter just added a GA4 connector for Sync Injector, which uses website tags to capture vendor-specific, non-PII customer IDs.  The system then matches them to profiles in GA4 and BigQuery.  This enables more accurate tracking of anonymous individuals across platforms, devices, and sessions, and targeted messages using vendor-specific identifiers.

Data- and identity-driven marketing platform Stirista has announced its new API Marketing Suite. Tools include a DSP+ API for CTV and display advertising campaign management, a Leads API for improved lead scoring and customer nurturing, and a Visits API to support multi-touch attribution. There are also opportunities for enhanced customer profile enrichment and firmographic insights.

The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green this week confirmed reports that The Trade Desk plans to launch a streaming TV OS to be named Ventura. The Trade Desk will not be getting into the CTV hardware business, but will partner with smart TV manufacturers and TV distributors to bring its software to their devices. Green believes that providers like Roku and Amazon Fire have a conflict of interest because they own content.

Full-funnel marketing platform Appier has announced generative AI integrations across its product suite. In its Advertising Cloud this will allow conversational campaign development and image adaptation. Personalization Cloud enhancements include a customer journey copilot and there’s a data copilot for Data Cloud too.

Omnichannel advertising platform Mediaocean will acquire adtech platform Innovid at an equity value of around $525 million. Together they will provide offerings they describe as “complementary” including ad delivery, creative personalization and measurement and optimization across channels. Innovid will merge with ad management and analytics platform Flashtalking which Mediaocean acquired in 2021.

WarGames.  The Matrix.  2001: a Space Odyssey.  No matter how many times we’re warned against autonomous AI, people continue to build it.  Agentic AI leader Salesforce is trying to limit the risk it’s creating by launching Agentforce Testing Center, which will let users test prototype agents in a secure, sandbox-like environment. They can (safely?) be let loose in the wild once properly configured.

Sixty-seven percent of media experts say that diminished consumer trust in the main social media platforms will be a drag on ad spend in the next twelve months according to a survey by Integral Ad Science (IAS). Over 50% say social media is the channel most vulnerable to ad fraud and brand risk. Nevertheless, it’s the top media priority for 61%, well ahead of digital advertising (43%).

No job is safe from AI.  Sophisticated fraudsters who spent years honing their craft now face competition from novices using no code fraud technology platforms to execute easy and cheap swindles. So says Sumsub in a 133-page that analyzed 3 million fraud attempts to find enough irresistibly horrifying details for a year’s worth of nightmares.  There’s even a 2025 Fraud Forecast.

Department of Justice officials reportedly will ask a judge to force Google to sell its Chrome browser, which gives Google access to data that is critical to its ad business. This follows the judge’s ruling in August that Google operates an illegal monopoly in the search market. But don’t sell that Alphabet stock quite yet: years of appeals lie ahead, and the new administration in Washington could change the DOJ position.

You get an agent, and you get an agent, and you get an agent — everybody gets their own AI agent using 1,800 large language models that Microsoft is making available to enterprise customers.  Preview announcements at Microsoft’s Ignite 2024 conference included pre-built autonomous agents, no-code agent-building tools, and AI-powered app creation assistants. Microsoft’s AI eco-system may be the largest: some say, “no one else is close.”

Twenty percent of Americans are routinely getting news from social media influencers, a figure that rises to 37% of adults under 30, says a Pew research study. But stop clutching those pearls: it turns out that influencers skew just slightly conservative (27% vs 21% liberal), liberals and conservatives are about equally likely to get their news from influencers, and most people (61%) say they get an even mix of opinions they agree and disagree with. Other Pew research finds that news websites or apps are still the most-preferred news source... Read More >