CDP Institute

With the Google Cloud Next conference in full swing, cloud data management platform Informatica has launched a Master Data Management Extension for BigQuery to support rapid onboarding of master data. This should enable rapid deployment of CDPs and generative AI solutions on Google Cloud. Ad agency group WPP will integrate Google Gemini (formerly Bard) with WPP Open, its AI-powered marketing operating system.

Snap and Snowflake are experimenting with an integration between Snap’s conversion APIs and Snowflake’s Marketing Data Cloud. Once the integration is rolled out, marketers will be able securely to share data like targeting and conversions, without building a custom back-end integration. Alongside the Google Cloud news, this is further evidence that data clouds are taking a more central role in the marketing technology space.

Hootsuite is looking to evolve from social media management to social media performance and the acquisition of social listening platform Talkwalker is intended to support that mission. Social listening has been around for years; Hootsuite’s plan is to apply Talkwalker AI to elevate listening to the generation of actionable insights and impact measurement. Together, Hootsuite and Talkwalker expect to offer reach across 100+ social networks and 150 million websites.

MessageGears is expanding its partnership with Snowflake to run its customer engagement solution for large consumer brands within Snowflake’s data cloud. This will enable Snowflake users to leverage data within the security and governance of the cloud to support MessageGears messaging and campaigns. MessageGears is one of the first customer engagement solutions to tread the path already taken by a number of CDPs.

ID5, the digital advertising identity provider, announced a $20 million Series B funding round with TransUnion joining the list of investors. ID5 provides the ad ecosystem with a transparent, scalable, privacy-compliant identity infrastructure based on hashed emails and other signals. The company does business in Europe, Japan and Australia.

Lots to unpack in this global Twilio survey.  More than one-third of Gen Z and millennial consumers purchase from a different brand when a business doesn’t personalize engagement in real time; consumers and businesses disagree on what it takes to build trust; more brands use CRM than CDP to understand customers.  Download for details.

Two-thirds (67%) of customer engagement leaders say their organization has too many overlapping point solutions, but 58% still feel their martech solutions are well integrated, according to this Forrester survey for Acoustic.  Although 99% all are collecting some type of customer behavior signals, only 32% say they can easily analyze them.

Data quality (50%) and fragmentation (47%) are top obstacles gaining data insights, data and IT professionals report in this TWDI survey.  The report says 13% are prioritizing a composable CDP instead of a traditional CDP as a way to make things better, although it doesn’t say how many have a traditional CDP in place.

Things are looking up on the investment front.  Fifty-three percent of VC managers expect to put more money into startups this year than last, according to Kaufman Fellows. This is supported by Crunchbase findings from Q1 with venture funding up 14% on Q4, 2023. Worse news for established start-ups: around 30% of Kauffman Fellows surveyed thought 2024 will be a tough year for exits.

GrowthLoop calls itself a “composable CDP” because it can extract audiences from Google BigQuery databases.  A complete CDP has many other capabilities but that’s a topic for another day.  GrowthLoop’s news is they now use Google’s Gemini generative AI tools to recommend target audiences.

LinkedIn has announced that it has connected TV ads in testing, designed to use first-party data to reach audiences selected from its community of one billion professionals. NBCU will be LinkedIn’s initial partner. Targeting is currently limited to the United States and Canada and CTV campaigns must be built in Campaign Manager.

Global mobile consumer spend with soar by 267% to $2.2 trillion by 2030 according to app analytics platform data.ai. The report also forecasts 2.9 trillion global downloads and almost 16 billion hours spent per day. Despite these mammoth figures, the CAGR in each case will be lower between now and 2030 than it was between 2017 and 2023, perhaps reflecting the diminishing numbers of non-mobile users out there.