CDP Institute

Finally, we come to RudderStack, which calls itself a Customer Data Platform but doesn’t fit our definition because they don’t store the data they collect. Instead, they move data between systems in real time, which makes them an integration platform. They’re very pleased to announce a Software-as-a-Service option in addition to the original private cloud-based version. Plenty of real CDPs also offer both, although they’re not open source like RudderStack.

The pandemic may have made it harder for new companies to raise funds, but investors do seem willing to double down on companies that have already reached significant size and industry position. Case in point: cloud contact vendor Talkdesk has just raised a $143 million Series C, raising its total to $268 million and pegging its value at more than $3 billion.

Meanwhile, advertisers continue to struggle to adjust to a world without third party cookies. Marketing research agency Kantar has just announced Project Moonshot, which will marry digital publisher data on who saw which ads with behavior data from Kantar’s 100 million-member consumer panel. Partners include Google, Pandora, Dish, Pinterst, Roku, Snap, Spotify and Twitter.

Attribution platform Kochava is also upping its measurement game. They’re working with email ad vendor LiveIntent to match LiveIntent’s 290 million anonymized, email-based IDs with Kochava’s 1.7 billion email-to-device pairs. Clients will be able to add their own email-based data to the mix and use the results for activation, targeting, and measurement.

Google Cloud has launched a public beta for Recommendations AI, an ecommerce recommendation engine offered as a managed service. It scales to millions of catalog items and can be retrained daily. But if it’s really so clever, why is Google is offering everyone the same $600 credit to try it?

“Malvertising” is advertising that loads malware onto the computers of people who click it. Not good. But ad fraud solution provider Escalated.io is now offering a product that identifies malware and stops it from being served. Delightfully, the system works “post auction”, which means malvertisers still pay for the ads. Well played.

An unknown hacker has been finding unsecured online databases and replacing their contents with the word “Meow”. Cute, except that no one knows if the hacker is stealing the data first. He or she has now hit more than 1,500 databases, a reminder that poor security is common and motivator for data owners to improve it.

Customer Data Platforms remain a high priority investment for retailers despite the pandemic, according to this CommerceNext survey for Exponea. The fraction planning to increase CDP spending fell from 58% in January to a still-respectable 49% in June, dropping CDPs from first to second on the list. Traditional retailers are more interested in CDP than digital-first retailers. Lots more here, including a distressing decline in plans to invest in security and privacy.

Customer data services company Acxiom has just launched a suite of CDP solutions, ranging from tool selection to implementation to analytics. They’ve partnered with CDP vendors including Adobe, Arm Treasure Data, Boxever, Exponea, and Tealium. No build vs buy angst here.

Those retailers downplaying security might want to think again based on this Dentsu Aegis Network study, which found that 77% of global consumers would stop doing business with a brand that lost their data or used it irresponsibly and 32% opted out of personalized advertising in the past year. There’s a very interesting set of four scenarios for how personal data use might evolve in the near future – definitely worth a look.

If data isn’t captured then is it really data? It’s not quite as perplexing as why we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway, but this Seagate study does raise the question, since their estimate that 68% of data isn’t used includes 44% of data that goes uncaptured. Lots of other, probably more useful information here, including top five obstacles to using data (all relevant to CDPs) and that two-thirds of respondents think their company’s data security is inadequate. Also interesting regional comparisons if that’s helpful.

Business intelligence vendor Qlik has another data management survey. They found data quality and correctness are the biggest obstacles to using it well. But I was more intrigued that 45% of companies had a new internal data source and 40% had a new external source in the past 12-18 months. And they show that better data management correlates with higher revenue, efficiency, and profits. Oxford comma forever!