CDP Institute

Cross-channel marketing automation platform (and CDP) Listrak is expanding its Shopify app to capture data from the Shopify server pixel and use it for identity resolution.  It will also add AI-powered predictive segmentation, present AI-driven product recommendations, auto-generate coupons within cross-channel triggered campaigns, and support real-time synchronization with customer, order, and product catalog information from Shopify.

MessageGears, an activation and engagement platform, isn’t a CDP because it reads its data directly from an external data warehouse.  They’ve just announced an integration with AI tool Jacquard, which will auto-generate individualized messages across email, push notification and SMS based on customer data and campaign goals.  The system will also continuously optimize life campaigns for marketing and transactional messages.

Big Brother may or may not be watching, but Total Expert, a customer engagement platform in the financial services space, is for sure.  They’re now using AI to automatically find life milestones like getting married and starting a family and add them to customer profiles. Come to think of it, “Total Expert” has a bit of an Orwellian ring to it, so maybe they’re just being on-brand.

OpenAI has inked a multi-year deal with Condé Nast to use content from its properties on its ChatGPT platform and its prototype SearchGPT. Condé Nast’s portfolio includes The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Vogue. OpenAI had previously closed similar deals with the Associated Press, Axel Springer, The Atlantic, Financial Times, News Corp and Time.

Aiming to stave off legislation that would mandate payment to use news content, Google is on the verge of striking a deal with the State of California to voluntarily contribute $172.5 million to supporting local news outlets over the next five years. The state would match that with $70 million. If the deal is finalized, the assumption is that the California Journalism Preservation Act would be shelved.

Publishing martech vendor Admiral has secured $19 million in new funding bringing its total capital raised to $28 million. Admiral helps digital publishers grow relationships with online readers thus increasing loyalty and revenue. It is the leading (okay, the only) vendor offering what it calls “VRM” — visitor relationship management.

Salesforce has released a suite of multi-modal AI models (meaning they don’t just generate text). Called xGen-MM (AKA BLIP-3), the models are said to represent a significant advance in genAI’s capabilities (the largest model has 4 billion parameters). What’s more, they’re open source, which is bound to raise anxiety levels about safe use.

EMarketer estimates that around 90% of U.S. browsers will reject third-party cookies in the long term. This is based on only 17% of Chrome users saying they accept cookies when asked by Chrome. It also assumes that Edge will deprecate cookies in 2024 as planned.

TV measurement platform iSpot has joined Comscore and VideoAmp as a fully certified ad currency deemed “transactable” by the U.S. Joint Industry Committee. The certification was earned by its cross-platform measurement methodology Data Connect. This follows MRC accreditation last year for its verification of national TV ad airings.

Yet again, a big tech company makes a decision then finds it second-guessed by European regulators (remember cookie deprecation?). Meta had announced the closure of CrowdTangle, a tool used, among other things, for analyzing misinformation on its platforms. European researchers do have certain data access rights under the Digital Services Act; hence the Request for Information.

Although local TV viewing panel data will continue to be available for research and analysis, Nielsen has announced the addition of “big data” from set-top boxes and smart TV platforms and services to its local market ratings. Fragmentation of TV viewing habits has led to instability in measurements derived from local “over-the-air” panels. A test run of data-plus-panel showed a slight overall 4% to 5% increase in TV-video usage.

If you thought you didn’t have to worry about being hacked while riding your bike, think again. Cyclists in Tour de France-level races face concerns about security vulnerabilities in wireless gear-shifting technology. Hacking that tech could lead to crashes and injuries if bad players seek an unfair advantage in the races.