CDP Institute

Facebook also knows more than it sometimes admits. Apparently, this includes how to do your job as a marketer: they’ve announced that advertisers will no longer be able to set budgets for individual ads within a campaign. Instead, Facebook will automatically allocate your funds to the most profitable ads. Whether that’s most profitable for you or for Facebook isn’t clear. But, hey, it’s Facebook – why wouldn’t you trust them?

When California passed a strong Consumer Privacy Act last year, many expected it would be watered down before taking effect in 2020. So far that hasn’t happened and, with the deadline fast approaching, it seemed the law might keep its teeth. Or not: it turns out that California is still working on regulations to implement the law and, sure enough, the Association of National Advertisers and other groups are lobbying hard to limit its impact. We’ll see if public concerns about privacy can overcome industry pressure. Anybody taking bets?

Customer success system vendor Gainsight has added a platform to support product managers. Features include product analytics, customer feedback reporting, personalized experiences, and key performance indicators. Gainsight calls its system a Product Experience Platform, which would yield the cheerful acronym of PEP.

Databricks doesn’t have a snappy acronym but they’ve eased the pain with a $250 million Series E to further grow their data analytics business. Databricks is a primary contributor to the open source Apache Spark analytics engine. Its revenue, now over $100 million, comes from a Spark-based Unified Analytics platform that simplifies preparation of analytical data and creation of machine learning models. They are not as customer-focused as a CDP but there’s surely some overlap.

Speaking of unrelated, Digiday reports that online furniture retailer Wayfair is emulating Amazon by selling product ads on its site. But while Amazon had nearly $2.5 billion in ad revenue in Q3 2018, Wayfair had under $13 million.

Maybe it’s the cold weather. Maybe it’s the approach of Valentines Day. Whatever the reason, compatible firms are hooking up at an alarming rate. First, B2B data compiler DiscoverOrg announced it is buying fellow compiler ZoomInfo. The B2B data space is getting crowded as firms like Radius, DemandBase and LeadSpace compete with traditional providers. You may also recall that Dun & Bradstreet was sold to private investors last August.

Next, adtech vendor Taptica has purchased adtech vendor RhythmOne. Both firms have a strong presence in connected TV advertising. Adtech is another crowded field undergoing consolidation.

Finally, email data company TowerData is buying Xverify, which validates email addresses. The combined firm will check that email addresses are valid and enhance email addresses with demographic, household and purchase intent data.

Sometimes you need data to prove the value of doing the right thing. CDP Institute is here to help. Trying to attach a price to good privacy practices? Cisco found that fewer GDPR-complaint companies had a recent data breach than non-compliant companies. Less comforting: the breach rate at compliant firms was 74%.

Need funding to speed up your Web site? Download this: Unbounce found that 85% of sample of mobile Web pages took more than five seconds to load, while the majority of users will leave after waiting for three seconds. Extra style points if you present this to your boss by pausing…five…seconds…between…each…word.

Does customer service need more attention? Digital asset management vendor Bynder found that excellent service was rated as the most effective brand differentiator by 29% of decision makers, far ahead of marketing campaigns (15%) or product (13%). The same survey found that 23% of marketers are struggling to find the right personalization technology, which has nothing to do with customer service but might still come in handy. You’re welcome.

All-in-one marketing software vendor Infusionsoft has changed its name to Keap and launched client management product fewer functions than its previous flagship system, which will also remain available. A some-in-one product, as it were. The vast majority of small businesses couldn’t make effective use of the original system.