CDP Institute

Explorium clearly isn’t a CDP but it also gathers data in its own way. Specifically, it analyzes predictive models and searches its library for external data sources that could help the models work better. They just raised a $75 million Series C. They also released an interesting survey on external data acquisition: 62% use external demographics data and 51% collect anonymized individual data.

Cloud-based communications platform Twilio is buying toll-free messaging platform Zipwhip to expand its multi-channel message delivery capabilities.  Price is $850 million in cash and stock.  Growth of multi-channel cloud platforms is one of the trends we’ve been watching.  You’ll recall that Twilio bought the Segment CDP last year for $3.2 billion.

AT&T is spinning off its WarnerMedia unit and combining it with Discovery, Inc. to create an even larger media business.  AT&T shareholders will own 71% of the combined business while Discovery shareholders own 29%.  This matters to you, Dear Reader, because the new entity will collect even more customer data than before.

To further clarify how valuable that streaming TV data is, we have this report that TV maker Vizio is making nearly as much money from its advertising and data business as it is from selling hardware: $38.4 million for data and ads vs $48.2 million for hardware in the first quarter of 2021, with the data and ad portion growing much more quickly.  The value comes from the comprehensive customer data Vizio’s smart TVs can collect.