CDP Institute

Customer Data Platforms are the most common tech investment priority for retailers, listed by 61%, CommerceNext reports.  The focus reflects a broader finding that data management has replaced data collection as the greatest challenge to leveraging first party data.  Lots more here about shifting media investments, performance measurement, privacy, and other topics.

Cloud databases are growing, but the majority of data remains in private data centers, according to this Denodo survey of data professionals.   Security, compliance, and governance is the top barrier to cloud adoption (72%).  Just 17% say they’re currently using cloud systems for data integration, analytics, and management, although another 29% are considering it.

“Transparency” is the most overused buzzword in advertising, says to this Mediaocean survey, followed closely by “cookieless/privacy-safe”.  “Customer Data Platform” doesn’t even make the list, which feels like a failure on our part.  More substantively, the study finds that marketers are more worried about the impact of cookie loss on their measurement capabilities than on marketing results.  Interesting.

The CDP industry is spending a lot of time debating whether IT teams should build their own systems or buy commercial software.  Capital One Financial Corp has taken ‘build’ to an extreme by letting other companies buy systems it originally built for itself.  The first product offered by Capital One Software is a data management tool for Snowflake.   It’s probably not a trend but if it is, you heard it here first.

You probably don’t need more convincing that shopping on social media is A Thing, Dear Reader.  But I’m still intrigued at how quickly the industry has hopped aboard that bandwagon.  So here’s news that Pinterest has just bought THE YES, which uses AI to create a personalized fashion shopping feed based on users’ preferences for brand, style, and size.

We all knew the day was coming when humans would be helpers to robots instead of the other way around.  Chatbot maker Gupshup has taken that one step closer by purchasing OneDirect, which helps human customer service agents handle the calls that chatbots can’t manage.  Gupshup doesn’t position it as humans helping chatbots but they’re not fooling anyone.

Zeta Global’s marketing platform (and CDP) is now available on the Amazon Web Service Marketplace, enabling easy deployment by AWS customers.  Zeta says it’s the first “marketing cloud” available in the AWS marketplace, which could be true.  But it’s not the first CDP: ActionIQ, Amperity, Blushift, Cordial, Informatica, Tealium, Treasure Data, and Segment are already listed.

Anything may go in politics and social behavior today, but at least addressable TV ads have standards.  Those come courtesy of Go Addressable, an initiative backed by Altice USA, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox, DIRECTV, DISH Media, and others.  They just released guidelines for ad creative and execution timelines, and listed approved vendors for data onboarding (LiveRamp, Experian, and Epsilon) and attribution (LiveRamp, Experian, and Nuestar).

DMOOH is the delightful acronym for Digital Moving Out-of-Home media, such as signs on taxicabs and, one hopes, cows.  Measurement is tough, since the ads are literally a moving target.  But don’t despair: the Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America is tackling the problem with standards for reporting DMOOH data.