CDP Institute

YouTube is not just a video platform, of course, it’s also a powerful search engine and it has begun testing a Google AI Overviews carousel that will appear in results for selected queries. Given the threat AI Overviews is perceived to pose to click-thru traffic in Google Search results, there’s a question about whether the YouTube initiative could depress click-thrus to brand and creator videos. Right now, the feature is only visible to a sub-set of U.S. premium users.

Google has updated its terms of service for Local Service Ads advertisers to allow it to use, modify, and analyze all content within the advertiser’s LSA profile — including phone calls from prospects. These rights are asserted not just across Google’s platforms and products but its affiliates too; who could object to that? This comes against the background of the new, improved AI-driven lead dispute process, which just happens to capture service details, pricing, special offers, and discounts.

Customer data and data management platform FirstHive has entered a strategic partnership with digital CX platform Infogain. Infogain will draw on FirstHive’s customer data-based predictive analytics to bolster its delivery of personalized experiences. FirstHive uses data from multiple touchpoints to create unified customer profiles that feed into its recommendation engine.

When BlueConic bought experience builder platform Jebbit last July, it positioned the combination as “the industry’s first-ever Operating System for Customer Data”. In case their meaning wasn’t clear, they’ve now directly integrated Jebbit with BlueConic profiles and segmentation, enabling marketers to launch no-code quizzes, surveys and personalized guided journeys without leaving the CDP.

OpenAI hasn’t announced it, but new coding now lets ChatGPT connect with Shopify’s hosted checkout. For users this would mean completing purchases without leaving ChatGPT for an external site. It’s a logical extension of OpenAI’s also unannounced, but widely expected, plan to place ads in ChatGPT responses.

Data privacy solutions provider Didomi will acquire server-side tagging platform Addingwell using funds from Marlin Equity Partners. Addingwell’s tagging and data monitoring helps companies maintain secure control over data collection and sharing. The two France-based companies are responding to the increasing challenges of user data protection.

Fines were coming since the Digital Markets Act went into force in May 2023, but now we know who first and how much. Apple’s main fault was imposing restrictions on app purchases made outside its own app store: $570 million (approximately); Meta was fined for its pay-or-consent ad model on Facebook and Instagram: only $230 million. At least Google got a rare day off.

The notoriously right-wing U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals shows little concern for due process rights of immigrants or First Amendment rights of Mississippi minors. But it eagerly cited a new Supreme Court ruling to expand the jury trial rights of corporations facing FCC penalties. The case involved a $57 million privacy fine against AT&T.

More than half of B2B marketers are dissatisfied with their tech stacks according to a survey by Pipeline360 (the number is 57%, which includes 36% that reporting their stack “functional but limited”). Around 70% are more interested in having insights and services delivered than gaining access to more tools. High-performing B2B teams boast “streamlined” tech stacks as well as effective data-handling practices.

The latest twist in this multi-year saga sees Google withdrawing its commitment to provide a standalone prompt for Chrome users to disable third-party cookies (they will still be able to do so in their security settings). While Google says it still supports the alternatives to cookies under development in Privacy Sandbox, it’s essentially as-you-were on cookies for the advertising industry. Privacy advocates are unhappy but Google’s priority is clearly to reduce anti-trust-based complaints from the advertising industry.

A new strategic partnership between Zenapse and LG Ad Solutions will support the use of Zenapse’s Large Emotion Model to power advertising across some 200 million LG smart TVs globally. Zenapse’s emotional intelligence AI and consumer psychographics data is expected to create more meaningful brand experiences to viewers. Raise your hand if you think AI adapting what you see to your emotional state is a good idea.

Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for CDPs was released a few weeks ago to the usual chorus of criticism. We’ll only note that TrustRadius has found that just 14% of B2B tech buyers consult analyst reports, down from 35% just three years ago. Most-used information sources per TrustRadius are prior experience (52%), product demonstrations (48%), user reviews (47%), vendor websites (45%) and free trials (36%), while 72% said they saw results from a Google Search AI Overview and 22% said they trust AI results always or very often, up from 9%... Read More >