CDP Institute

Damn the anti-trust rulings, full speed ahead seems to be the motto at Google these days. Their latest extensions include new CTV partnerships allowing ad placement across more streaming services, a new partnership with Roblox to reach gamers, and more ad placements within high-profile live and sports events. Google says its display and video ads are now reaching 98% of CTV households, not least thanks to the enormous reach of YouTube.

When did you last Skype someone? Come to that, when did you first Skype someone? The app, precursor of FaceTime, Zoom and all the rest is bidding farewell after 23 years, with Microsoft rolling it into Microsoft Teams. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The martech universe grew 9% to 15,384 companies, according to the latest Scott Brinker/Frans Riemersma State of Martech report. The study includes a 96-person survey showing the share of B2C and mixed B2C/B2B companies with a CDP at the center of their stack fell by nearly 10% since 2024. But closer analysis suggests what’s really happening is companies are switching to CDPs inside customer-facing systems.

In a new district court filing, the DOJ has proposed that Google divest itself of ad exchange product AdX and pursue a phased sale of ad server DoubleClick for Publishers in order to restore competition in the adtech space. This follows a decision by the judge finding Google guilty of acquiring and maintaining monopoly power in digital advertising. Google argues the measures would harm advertisers and publishers.

StackAdapt will integrate email marketing and a first-party Data Hub into its programmatic advertising platform. This will enable users to activate email campaigns alongside programmatic campaigns in display, TV, video and other media. The email solution is supported by Data Hub which uses first-party data to orchestrate customer journeys and measure outcomes.

You might think that every CDP can integrate external data these days, but that’s not necessarily true. So let’s report that BlueConic has added Secure Data Sharing for Snowflake, which means it can connect directly to governed data within Snowflake without exporting or copying. This was one of a number of recent announcements from BlueConic, including the adoption of a new descriptor for their offering, Customer Growth Engine.

No fewer than 92% of analytics and IT leaders say the need for trustworthy data is greater than ever, with 87% pointing to AI as driving its importance. While 57% of those data analytics and IT leaders have full confidence in their data’s accuracy, just 45% of marketing leaders feel the same. Across 10,000 respondents to the Salesforce survey, there was general agreement that security threats were a challenge to good data management (that doesn’t mean hide it all away in silos — see below).

Jamie from our Department of the Obvious ran into the office the other day waving this report from Adobe, which surveyed 3,200 CX professionals to discover that personalization is hard if customer data is siloed. Specifically, two-thirds believe data siloes block personalized engagement at critical points in the customer journey. Sixty-four percent of senior executives cite security and governance issues as reasons for the silos; 48% admit their data is a mess.