SAP announced acquisition of Abakus, which uses a “patented game theory-based attribution technology” to estimate the incremental impact of marketing efforts. It will be part of SAP’s Hybris Marketing Cloud, which already builds a single customer view and executes omnichannel marketing programs. Attribution has been a hot topic recently: you’ll recall we wrote about Visual IQ on 12/13 and Proof on 12/6.

Visual IQ ingests Web and offline audiences, builds individual-level contact histories, and uses them for marketing attribution and media optimization.  It announced that four marketing agencies (360i, KBS, MullenLowe Mediahub and The Media Kitchen) have become its first certified alliance partners.  The system can generate optimized media plans but not individual-level segments.

Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation.  The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.