CDP Institute

Next we have a report from Sigma Computing on the challenges in building data-driven organizations. They found that data experts and business people have a tough time communicating. Can’t argue with that. Sigma’s solution is for both groups to work in a shared tool, rather than handing work back and forth. It just so happens that Sigma sells one.

And here’s one from Jamie in our Department of the Obvious. This Harvard Business Review report – actually a Webinar summary – reports that the biggest obstacle to becoming a data-driven company is the lack of a data-driven culture. Glad we straightened that out.

Maybe you knew that Dun & Bradstreet has a software product named Account Based Marketing and maybe you didn’t. Either way, you can probably guess what it does. And you may be interested to learn that they’ve just added a slew of enhancements, including a display advertising engine, omni-channel campaign orchestration, Web personalization, and account engagement analytics.

In the glass half empty or half full department, The CMO Survey from Duke Fuqua found that marketers expect an average 5% budget increase this year but an average 9% headcount reduction. Nearly one quarter (24%) don’t expect those jobs to return. Digital marketing spend will rise by 4% while traditional ad spend will drop by 5.3%.

The IAB also asked marketers about their budgets. They found total ad spend in the second half of 2020 is expected to drop by 20% even though digital ad spending will rise by 13%. Connected TV, digital video, and social media are expected to grow the fastest.

Ah, some straight up news for a change: Account Based Marketing vendor Demandbase has bought Account Based Marketing vendor Engagio. There’s some overlap but enough difference for the deal to make sense.

LiveIntent, which sells advertising within emails, has entered the race to replace third party cookies. The Rubicon Project ad exchange will embed a LiveIntent identifier, based on hashed email address, in prebid headers. This lets advertisers track individuals across Web sites without revealing their actual identities.

CDP vendor Segment has analyzed the tools its 20,000 clients send data it collects from Web sites and mobile apps. They found the fastest growing categories during the pandemic lockdowns were ad tracking tools, including Facebook Pixel and Google Ads, and customer success tools including Salesforce, Zendesk, and New Relic. They explain the growth in ad tracking tools as reflecting a shift to digital advertising and the growth in customer success tools as reflecting more interest in retention.

Adventure! Drama! Comedy! You won’t find any of those in the news that Walmart has expanded its third-party Web marketplace to include Shopify merchants. But it’s still a reminder of Walmart’s continued development as an Amazon alternative.

Attribution! I can deliver on that one. TV measurement company 605 has launched a new service to measure the impact of TV ads on consumer behavior. The solution connects viewership data on 21 million U.S. households with data on foot traffic, purchases, or other behaviors.

Targeting! Location-based marketing vendor GroundTruth has added Connected TV and desktop ad targeting, allowing marketers to reach people who visit particular locations when they’re somewhere else. This supplements GroundTruth’s core ability to reach those people on their mobile devices. Fun!

No one really knows what the post-COVID-19 world will look like, but everybody has an opinion. Let’s look at some today. We’ll start with this survey of marketers from The 614 Group, which found that just 19% expected in-person conferences will reach their pre-pandemic levels but 76% said they personally expect to attend. I’d interpret that to mean attendance is more likely than it seems. More here on what people miss most about their office (hint: it’s not their boss).