“Malvertising” is advertising that loads malware onto the computers of people who click it. Not good. But ad fraud solution provider Escalated.io is now offering a product that identifies malware and stops it from being served. Delightfully, the system works “post auction”, which means malvertisers still pay for the ads. Well played.
The pandemic may have made it harder for new companies to raise funds, but investors do seem willing to double down on companies that have already reached significant size and industry position. Case in point: cloud contact vendor Talkdesk has just raised a $143 million Series C, raising its total to $268 million and pegging its value at more than $3 billion.
Those retailers downplaying security might want to think again based on this Dentsu Aegis Network study, which found that 77% of global consumers would stop doing business with a brand that lost their data or used it irresponsibly and 32% opted out of personalized advertising in the past year. There’s a very interesting set of four scenarios for how personal data use might evolve in the near future – definitely worth a look.
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).