Customer Data Platforms remain a high priority investment for retailers despite the pandemic, according to this CommerceNext survey for Exponea. The fraction planning to increase CDP spending fell from 58% in January to a still-respectable 49% in June, dropping CDPs from first to second on the list. Traditional retailers are more interested in CDP than digital-first retailers. Lots more here, including a distressing decline in plans to invest in security and privacy.

I don’t know about your team, but people around here are bored enough that they’ve started scraping wax off the kitchen floor to see what color tile is underneath. If you’re looking for a marginally more productive activity, MartechTribe has released an interactive martech landscape that shows how often different products are used together. Hours of fun and it won’t hurt your knees.

With CDP vendors increasing their workforces by 3.4% in six months, compared with an average of 0.2% each six months over the prior two years, the sector seems to be growing again, according to our own semi-annual industry update. There is much talk of composable CDPs but they still employ no more than 5% of the sector workforce. What is a clear trend is the acquisition of independent CDPs by vendors interested in adding a CDP to a larger system (usually an activation system).