CDP Institute

PayPal, sitting on data from millions of users, has entered the ad business with a new division headed by Mark Grether who formerly led advertising at Uber. Earlier this year, it launched Advanced Offers, using AI and company data to help merchants target PayPal users with personalized offers. Unlike Advanced Offers, the new ad product will be available to brands that don’t sell products or services through PayPal.

Design platform Canva has launched Canva Enterprise, a new subscription offering for large organizations (and a fairly explicit challenge to Adobe). Among the new tools are an “infinite whiteboard” for collaboration and Brand Kit, a central repository for brand assets with customizable brand controls and approvals. The AI-powered Magic Studio is included.

Unified Natural Foods Inc’s new Media Network (UMN) will serve independent grocery retailers, including 30,000-plus retail locations and more than 10,000 brand partners.  It will be powered by retail media platform Swiftly. Suppliers will be able to market directly to shoppers via the retailers in the network.

Despite using 4+ audience management systems on average, 85% of media companies don’t feel they have the technology they need to reach their goals, according to this study from audience marketing platform Omeda.  Top challenges are converting unknown visitors (60%) and disconnected workflows (52%).  To close the gaps, 25% plan a CDP investment, which is more than personalization (22%), campaign management (18%) or data governance (7%) but less than marketing automation (45%), data visualization/performance/reporting (33%), database/data warehouse (33%) and AI and machine learning (29%).

While companies focused on AI like Nvidia and OpenAI performed well in polling-based Axios Harris reputation scores, social media platforms, notably those using generative AI, did poorly. Nvidia, the chips company, was new to the list and was number one for overall reputation, number eight for trust. Which begs the question, how many of those polled know Nvidia as well as they know Facebook or X?

Only 27.3% of consumers from a 9,500 sample believe AI has the potential to improve their customer experience and only 26% think it will make experience more personalized (other surveys report much more enthusiasm). More than half, however, were interested in using chatbots to get information. A growing number (over 40%) will use ChatGPT or similar solutions to research purchases.

Marketers have plenty of tech, according to Ninth Edition of Salesforce’s State of Marketing Report: 72% have a CDP, and even more have tools for analytics (88%), CRM (86%) and journey management (78%).  But just 32% are fully satisfied with the results of their marketing investments.  They have reason to be unhappy: barely half have fully integrated data, under 60% have real time data, and just 40% can pull a customer segment without IT assistance.

This CMO Council report is a bit more positive: 56% said they met their revenue goals despite market turbulence.  But 37% say their marketing campaign execution needs improvement.  CDP ranks second (49%) on their list of most valuable investments, trailing only gen AI (57%).

Adobe has announced the availability of Adobe Express for Enterprise. It will offer on-brand automated content creation including generative AI-powered creation by Firefly. Adobe had released a mobile app version of Express earlier this year.

Salesforce’s Data Cloud CDP will provide customer and enterprise data to power real-time Einstein Personalization across its full suite of marketing, commerce, and service offerings, the company announced today.  Data Cloud will also support new AI copilots for marketing and commerce, set for launch this summer.  A new Data Cloud for Commerce will bring inventory, product and customer data together.

Google Performance Max will use Google AI across bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creative and attribution, the company announced at Google Marketing Live this week. Google also said it will incorporate ads directly into AI Overviews search responses.  That’s small comfort for companies that fear AI Overviews will reduce organic (i.e., free) traffic from Google search.

Luma’s State of Digital 2024 report provides their usual deep insight into industry trends. Most will be familiar but one prediction we didn’t expect is that control will shift to expert influencers such as journalists, scientists, and bankers. Maybe: the creator economy is worth billions, but success rests on distribution gatekeepers, including some with precarious foundations such as TikTok.