The CDP industry had a good first half, with existing vendors growing a solid 10% and eleven new vendors, according to the CDP Institute’s latest Industry Update.  But investment activity was down, with just one big deal ($175 million for Bloomreach) and one acquisition (BlueConic sold a majority stake to Vista Equity Partners).  Lots more here, of course.

Influencer marketing occupies an untamed corner of the media jungle, although plenty of companies have tried to civilize it.  The Association of National Advertisers is helping with a set of guidelines for measuring influencer marketing results.  The guidelines offer definitions for different awareness, engagement, and conversion metrics plus a handy chart of how different social platforms do their calculations.

Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content.   But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines.  Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results.  We’ll see if competitors do the same.