On safer turf, CRM platform LeadSquared raised a $32 million Series B. They offer a combined sales, service, and marketing platform for companies that sell products like education, healthcare, and financial services. We also have a $160 million raise for spa and salon software platform Zenoti, putting its total at $251 million and $1 billion valuation.
Microsoft Azure has released a tool to discover and map data residing in all systems, within and outside of Azure itself. Azure Purview scans metadata and adds data sensitivity levels that help enforce limits based on privacy or other considerations. Data discovery is a key challenge for both Customer Data Platform implementations and privacy management.
Privacy concerns may also be hitting Facebook where it hurts. This DigiDay report says that media buyers are being told to shift budgets elsewhere. Privacy is one possible reason; high ad costs, poor ad tools, and more competitive options are others. Color me skeptical, although this Dentsu report says Facebook growth shows some weakness.
GrowthLoop will use TransUnion identity data to improve U.S. consumer match rates on client files sent to advertising media such as Facebook and Google Ads. The data should also help clients to find matches among records within their files, building more accurate customer profiles. GrowthLoop calls itself a “composable CDP”, meaning it works with data assembled in external data warehouses.