CDP Institute

Speaking of horrible customer service: airlines. Our Department of the Obvious intern Jamie offers this JD Power study showing that customers are unhappy when airline loyalty programs are confusing. In another sign how pitifully grateful consumers are for crumbs of humane treatment, satisfaction increases when airline staff recognizes a customer by name or remembers their preferences.

Jamie also shares this Digitas report that smart speakers threaten brand loyalty because people tend to buy the first item offered – as often as 85% of the time, in fact. True to stereotype, Millennials are twice as likely as older folks to buy the first item offered even if it’s not the brand they requested. One ray of hope: more smart speakers are coming with screens attached and 78% of buyers said they’d use them to find more purchase options.

Let’s try some corporate news today. We’ll start with a $6.4 million Series A funding for Skupos, which gives convenience store operators a real-time inventory tracking system that supports automated purchasing and operational reporting. Interestingly, they position themselves as an analytics vendor not an inventory specialist.

Sticking with retail, computer vision and augmented reality expert Blippar has launched a product that maps a user’s precise in-store location using computer vision, rather than beacons or similar technologies. The system can then use augmented reality to help people find things (imagine a bunch of arrows floating mid-air) or display information (such as a menu in front of a restaurant). It’s presumably cheaper than beacons, which many retailers have balked at buying.

Observe.AI is also using AI to guide people, although in their case it’s helping phone agents. The system listens to phone calls as they happen, interprets context and user emotions, and gives agents suggestions for what to do next. They just raised an $8 million Series A.

We love a good trend and are therefore pleased to propose that outdoor advertising is about to become one.

Google may enter the outdoor ad industry, according to a German magazine. The article speculates that Google won’t target ads at individuals based on their Web browsing industry – although it could. Instead, it would find the most suitable ads for the combined audience of each display at each time. Others already do this but they’re not Google.

I couldn’t find a third item about outdoor.

More than one observer has proclaimed GDPR a failure because the world didn’t change overnight when it took effect.

Of course, people can’t grant consent if they’re not offered the opportunity.

Despite the confusion around GDPR, 60% of companies in this Demandbase survey said it has caused them to change their global approach to privacy. Yet just 32% were fully GDPR compliant while 22% were entirely unaware of it. Not quite half – 41% — were at least somewhat concerned that their martech vendors might expose them to GDPR compliance risks. The survey was taken several weeks after the GDPR effective date.

Customer Data Platforms are deployed by 38% of the marketers and vendors surveyed by Winterberry Group in a new report for the DMA. The figure is impressive although CDPs still lag Data Management Platforms (48%), Third party data (51%) and CRM databases (69%). Other results: insights and email targeting are the most goals for identity-related investments and extracting data from “walled garden” vendors like Facebook, Google, and Amazon is the biggest challenge in identifying addressable audiences. Lots more.