CDP Institute

Online measurement firm Hitwise has abruptly closed its doors, less than a month after it lost data feeds (almost certainly) from Jumpshot, which was itself shut down due to privacy issues. It makes life harder for marketers but does show that privacy regulations are having some real-world effect.

Facebook faces no immediate existential threat but the Hitwise news must still cause a tiny shiver somewhere in its icy soul. They published a white paper today trying to guide regulatory discussion in a favorable direction, mostly asking for rules that mimic the way they already do business. Because they’re doing a great job, right?

I can’t quite decide whether this is newsworthy or not, Dear Reader, but you might like to know that Dun & Bradstreet is hatching plans to get public again, less than a year after it was purchased by private investors. D&B announced it had submitted a draft S-1 but the document is confidential.

In more straightforward business news, AdQuick announced $6 million Series A to expand its business of programmatically selling out-of-home advertising. The company had already raised $3.2 million in seed rounds. Its Web site will tell you the cost of various outdoor media in your home town, if you’re looking for something to do.

We also have a $5 million seed round for Databook. They gather B2B buying intent data and use it to tell sales reps which accounts to contact and what to say. Lots of AI inside this one.

Hi, it’s Jamie, Senior Intern at the CDP Institute Department of the Obvious.

Next we have a study from Braze that found 95% of U.S. adults think privacy laws should do more to protect their data and 84% have walked away when a company asked for too much personal information. Think it’s obvious that companies should tell consumers how their data is used? You’re right: so do 99% of executives and 94% of consumers.

Finally, in honor of President’s Day, our Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb Award goes to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which has announced it will examine every acquisition made by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft in the past ten years to see if they were trying to stifle competition. Bets don’t get much safer.

I guess every smartphone owner knows how easy it is to create a video. But you might still be surprised that more than half the small business marketers surveyed by video creation platform Promo publish one or more videos per week. Don’t be too impressed: 64% are under 20 seconds long and 49% are made in less than ten minutes.

Still wondering if video is really that popular? Well, video creation platform Clipchamp has over eight million registered users. Most are using the free version but they have enough paid customers to justify a $9 million Series A, adding to $1.4 million in seed funding.

I couldn’t find another video story but you could make a great horror movie from this O’Reilly report on data quality. Open with a shot of data analyst angrily slamming down a newspaper article headlined “80% of organizations don’t follow data governance best practices”, follow her futile battle to gather enough resources to do her job, and end with her slowly going mad as she tries to reconcile endless, inconsistent data sources. Okay, maybe you won’t win an Oscar with that one.

Habu, which just came out of stealth with $15 million in funding, calls itself a “marketing data operating system” for “stitching together marketing and advertising data from multiple platforms to deliver a relevant consumer experience across all channels”. That sounds like a CDP but they are taking a non-CDP approach that includes analyzing data inside the “clean rooms” offered by Google, Facebook and other walled gardens. The founders held senior positions at Krux and Salesforce, which either helps or harms their credibility.