CDP Institute

More than 70% of U.S. broadband households own a connected TV or other connected device, says research firm Parks Associates. In fact, the average household owns six to eight, meaning they already outnumber humans by a wide margin. Parks sees smart speakers as the key to keeping them under control. Lots more here on the topic.

Location-based marketing platform HYP3R has raised a $17 million Series A funding, bringing its total to $23.5 million. HYP3R identifies customers when they enter a geo-fenced location such as a mall or hotel and sends them personalized, real-time messages. It can also track visits to competitive locations and monitor social media comments about a location. HYP3R specializes in travel and retail clients.

YouSpace’s Total Experience Kit watches what happens in front of a digital display and reacts. It can monitor people near a display, recognize human body shapes and actions including touch-free instructions, and display different contents based on the situation. Users set the rules, or so they like to think. The system will be released by the end of this year.

Ryff offers even greater control over user experience, enabling video producers to dynamically vary objects as a video is streamed to a smart TV or other device. Different people can see different objects at the same time, based on rules set up by the video producers. So much for shared reality.

Let’s try product news today. CRM data orchestration platform Openprise has added integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Capabilities include list loading data cleansing, segmentation, enrichment, lead scoring, and more. It’s sort of like the functions in a Customer Data Platform, except that you’re jamming the results into a CRM database. Which isn’t like a CDP at all.

Optimizely announced Adaptive Audiences, which uses AI to define segments of visitors with similar intent and select contents suited to each segment. This is working with segments, not finding the best content for each individual. But it’s a step towards true individual-level personalization. The product is just entering beta tests.

Advocado has launched MicroMoment+, which automatically raises Google ad keyword bids for a few minutes after a TV ad is broadcast. Sounds crazy but a pilot study found a 98% increase in click-through. The system can also tie phone calls back to specific ads and includes prebuilt integration with Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Ads, Facebook, Bing ads, Microsoft Dynamics365, Zoho and Google Analytics. Advocado recently merged with Traaqr, which provides small businesses with online-to-phone conversion tracking.

B2B data and analytics vendor Radius has launched Unify, a Customer Data Platform that combines Radius’ proprietary business and contact data with clients’ own data. Users can access the data through Radius’ own audience discovery and segmentation system, Radius Discover, or with third party applications via a Radius API.

Speaking of B2B data, a Dun & Bradstreet survey found that marketers’ confidence in their data had fallen, from 75% last year to 51% this year, even as the proportion who consider data quality important rose from 80% to 89%. Just 38% are currently using Account Based Marketing and 41% have no intention of adopting it. The report speculates the poor data is a roadblock to wider ABM adoption.

Meanwhile, mobile ad platform Smaato reports that GDPR resulted in a sharp spike in costs for non-targeted mobile ad impressions, as advertisers shied away from targeting data they were not certain was collected with proper consent.

Let’s look at some research that contradicts what we think we know.

Another surprise: having customer service employees who are friendly and polite is more important to consumers than having agents know in advance who is calling or offering compensation when things go wrong, according to a survey from Customer Contact Week Digital.