Cracking the telco market has been tough for CDP vendors due to high volumes, special needs, a preference for on-premises solutions, and deeply entrenched competitors. Rather than go it alone, Microsoft is teaming with telco specialist Amdocs to integrate Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud products with Amdocs’ Commerce and Care suite. The Microsoft CDP is in there somewhere.
Wunderkind, formerly BounceX, just raised a $76 million Series C, bringing its total to $152 million. The company targets ads based on website behavior. It works mostly with first-party data, including ads based on publishers’ own data. This limits privacy issues although some people still feel behavioral targeting is creepy.
The adtech space is suffering from increasing privacy restraints, declining ad sales, and new competitors such as Connected TV and Retail Media Networks. One result is consolidation. Today we have two deals to report: ad automation platform Simpli.fi is buying contextual and native ad specialist Bidtellect; and, ad monetization vendor MonetizeMore is buying Advanced Ads, which builds ad management tools for WordPress sites.
Just over one-third of marketers plan to either buy a new CDP (21%) or replace an existing one (13%) this year, according to this Optimove survey. Unfortunately, it doesn’t report how many have a CDP already in place, which would put the other values in perspective. It does seem that CDPs are a relatively low priority: they rank sixth on the list of new systems and eighth on the list of systems to replace.