CDP Institute

Happy 2019, Dear Reader. The CDP Institute elves worked hard over the holidays to greet you with our latest CDP Industry Update. They found the industry grew 60% in 2018 and ended with an estimated $740 million revenue. Lots of details about where the growth came from and what happens next.

Forbes CMO Practice also has a new report, funded by CDP ARM Treasure Data. The focus is marketing accountability but they did find that 61% of high-performing marketers have a single customer view. That’s seems high but remember that was just high-performing marketers. Alas, they didn’t provide an average.

Don’t feel left out, B2B marketers. Here’s a Forrester report for you, sponsored by Salesforce B2B Commerce (formerly CloudCraze). It sheds some light on the perennial suite-vs-best-of-breed debate: 13% of respondents use a single vendor stack for all their B2B selling needs, 40% use one primary vendor and supplement as needed, 37% assemble best-of-breed tools, and 9% use a home-grown solution. Good to know.

Since this is our last newsletter of the year, let’s lead with what we consider by far the major marketing story of 2018: the shattering of Facebook’s reputation as its true practices and impact became known. CNET published a nice summary of Facebook’s troubles  but that the company could face a billion dollar GDPR fine for data breaches has been less reported – and shows just how much the world has changed.

But lets’ not end on a negative note. This think piece from IBM Watson marketing lists several 2019 marketing trends, including a central role for marketing data. The report is marred by regrettable word mash-ups: you can safely bet that no one will adopt “martecheter” to describe tech-savvy marketers or “consulgences” for consulting-oriented ad agencies.

For a still broader view, Accenture Interactive’s Fjord innovation consultancy predicts all sorts of reversals as people turn away from digital overload and seek tech-enabled authenticity. Many deep things to ponder as you ring in the New Year. Best wishes from the CDP Institute.

Did you know there’s Marketing Accountability Standards Board? Me neither. Judging from the density of this paper Forbes CMO paper done in conjunction with them, they’re more accountants than marketers. I mean, 46 footnotes? They did include some digestible bits, including that companies with better marketing accountability achieve 5% better returns on marketing investments and over 7% higher growth. Lots more here to read the kids during that long ride to Grandma’s.

Not sure your kids will sit still for a 33 page Forbes paper? No problem: the creative folks at Deloitte Digital have extracted a nine-page summary from the massive CMO Survey they do with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. CDP aficionados will be pleased to learn that “marketers are finally realizing the consequences of poorly integrated customer information across channels”. More relevant to today’s theme: 68.4% of marketers don’t use analytics data to help make everyday business decisions. Didn’t know we had a theme today, did you?

Maybe CMOs would be more successful if they spent less time answering surveys. Here’s one more, this time by partner marketing specialist WorkSpan. They found that just 11% of marketers are confident their budget is spent effectively. Perhaps hoping to save marketers some time, WorkSpan reported results in a press release without publishing the report itself. And, I was just kidding about CMO surveys: 68% of study respondents held non-CMO titles.

It looks like I’ll be publishing all week after all, Dear Reader. There’s just enough legitimate news to make it worthwhile. For example, AdTheorent has a new tool that uses AI to generate the best display ad for each individual, combining creative elements such as product shots, logos, colors, backgrounds, messaging and calls-to-action in real time. AdTheorent was already using predictive analytics to decide which consumers to serve ads and when.

And here’s a $101 million Series C funding from data science platform Dataiku, which serves data scientists and business users alike. A lot of what Dataiku does is actually data preparation – making it either a CDP client or partial competitor. The round is by far Dataiku’s largest; it had raised just under $46 million previously.

Why not make some news of your own? You could win a Marketing Technology Award at a post New York City ceremony next March hosted by the ubiquitous Scott Brinker. The project is run by ClickZ and Search Engine Watch. Entry is free – look here for details.