CDP Institute

T-Mobile will allow advertisers to target more than 20,000 screens in 11,000 store locations. That’s a lot of screens, but how much foot traffic does the average T-Mobile store get? It’s also linking up with streaming media company Plex as a CTV partner.

Eight newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News have brought a lawsuit against OpenAI for allegedly taking “millions” of articles without permission or payment to train their large language models. The plaintiffs are asking for damages and also the destruction of LLMs trained on their work. So much for yesterday’s Financial Times news suggesting publishers and OpenAI could get along.

Only 10% of respondents to a Pew Research survey of over 10,000 U.S. adults viewed social media’s impact on America positively; 64% took the negative view. A whopping 78% say the platforms have too much influence on politics. More than half believe that major tech companies should face more government regulation.

It’s deal-making time for generative AI model builders and publishers who can provide them with quality data.  Germany publishing giant Axel Springer is trading access to its data for Microsoft adtech, AI, and Azure hosting solutions.  Meanwhile, The Financial Times has struck a deal with OpenAI to license its content with attribution of summaries and quotes.

High profile adtech DSP MedaMath, which filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and was acquired by Infillion, has been relaunched within Infillion’s global media buying platform. Infillion will deploy MediaMath’s AI performance model, omnichannel inventory segments according to advertiser verticals and KPIs, and the MediaMath Academy for adtech certification. Infillion will provide performance measurement and attribution.

Advertisers are understandably reluctant to accept performance measurements from ad platforms like Meta.  Marketing analytics agency Kantar is providing more credible reporting through a “direct integration” with Meta. The integration retrieves ad exposure information and measures lift for a sample of opted-in panelists from Kantar’s 100 million-strong Profiles Network.

In a follow-up to their January report, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority raised the number of concerns they have with Privacy Sandbox to 79. Among other issues, they adopted the privacy concerns raised by another U.K. regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office. Google’s recent decision to shift third-party cookie deprecation to next year might mean they saw this coming.

Two-thirds of 1,000-plus employee companies report growing levels of CX maturity (33% at the “investigate” stage, 33% at “mobilize”) according to a survey of almost 300 experience management pros by Qualtrics XM Institute. While a growing number (almost 70%) see customer trust as key to success, only 21% are measuring it regularly. Businesses are spending more on XM technology, less on XM consultants.

For CEOs, improving customer experience ranks around fifth on their list of priorities for this year, lagging behind recruiting and retaining talent and increasing efficiency. Curiously, CEOs were much more concerned with meeting “customer expectations,” as if those expectations don’t include a good experience. Marcum-Hoftstra University surveyed over 250 CEOs and other senior executives.

Just over half of consumers (54%) like to receive personalized messages because they show the consumers are known to the brand, plus they can be time savers. The rest (46%) find it at best unimportant, at worst creepy. Relevance far outstrips personalization when it comes to driving email opens (54% vs. 19%). Takeaway: treat each customer the way they prefer.

Marketers say their top KPIs are long-term ROI and full-funnel ROI, but 70% plan to increase their performance marketing spend and reduce investment in brand building — a tactic that may not support the long-term strategic goals. There have been significant reductions in ad spend in traditional mass channels like TV and radio as dollars shift to digital channels. Nielsen research shows TV leading the way as a long-term ROI multiplier.

M&A deal making in Q1 2024 rose 2% on the previous quarter, Luma Partners reports. Dialogues about deal-making noticeably increased with adtech and digital content leading the way while martech remained depressed. Deals worth $100m+ continued strong from Q4 2023 showing strategic buyers are still interested in quality acquisitions.