CDP Institute

Retail media includes both ads on ecommerce web sites like Amazon (boring) and ads on retail media network sites owned by retailers like Albertsons, Lowes, and Best Buy (fun!).  Leave it to eMarketer to put things in perspective with a report that ecommerce ads account for just under 90% of the total $31.5 billion that will be spent on U.S. retail media in 2021, leaving the nascent retail ad networks with a fairly minor $3 billion or so.   That’s just 2% of the $150 billion total U.S. digital ad spend.

Like the gold rush merchants who made more money selling shovels than the prospectors who bought them, digital analytics vendors have built a very profitable niche.  Mixpanel is one of the leaders, and they just raised a $200 million Series C to continue that growth.  The deal brings their total funding to $277 million and puts their valuation at $1.05 billion.

ThoughtSpot also sells tools to data miners.  Their special power is letting users query cloud databases in natural language.  They just brought their total funding to $674 million with a $100 million Series F at a $4.2 billion valuation.

Aqfer offers a suite of highly-scalable SaaS tools that include a data collection tag, customer database, real-time data access, and identity graph manager.  It sells these to integrators, agencies, data compilers, and other firms that want to control their own system rather than buying a packaged CDP.  They just raised an $11 million Series A to help explain it more clearly than I just did.

Netherlands-based Spotler Group has been buying email providers across Europe for several years now.  They just added Pure360-parent Purepromoter to the list.  Spotler bought Dutch CDP Squeezely back in August.

Finally, a quick romp through the data monetization garden. Stor.ai, a digital commerce platform for grocers, has added an analytics suite that lets retailers share (or sell) their data with packaged good manufacturers. Knoema, which helps companies sell their data on the Snowflake Data Marketplace, has a deal for consulting firm Alternative Data Analytics to assist its clients.  Meanwhile, the IAB reports that 75% of Connected TV and Over the Top TV companies say they sell personal information but there’s no consensus on how they’ll comply with California’s CCPA privacy... Read More >

Treasure Data has launched a unified platform for privacy, consent management, compliance and security controls on personal data.  The new suite, Trusted Foundation, provides central control over data access, ensures that all activations comply with consent requirements, and monitors data use through log audits and anomaly detection.   Treasure Data isn’t the first CDP to add privacy management, but it’s still not common.

Zeta is the latest CDP to hop on the Snowflake bandwagon.  They’ve launched Zeta Connect, which simplifies integration of Snowflake data with the Zeta CDP, which includes activation capabilities, and Zeta Enrich, which connects Snowflake data with Zeta’s identity graph, data hygiene and enrichment tools.  Go ahead: call it an avalanche.

Would automated text generation platform Narrative Science make the Snowflake-avalanche connection?  Maybe you can ask your Salesforce rep, since Salesforce just purchased Narrative Science for an undisclosed sum.  The acquisition will extend Tableau’s data explanation capabilities, so newsletter writers seem to be safe for now.