CDP Institute

Retail and restaurant companies have been hit hardest by lock-downs, so it might not be surprising that 83% of C-level executives told Cambridge Retail Advisors that their industries will be changed forever. Just 65% plan to reopen all their locations and 53% feel most consumers will exclusively shop online with in-store (BOPIS) or at-curb pickup (BOPAC).

Other industries haven’t been as severely disrupted as retail, so it makes sense that under two-thirds of senior business and IT executives from a broad range of industries told Telstra that COVID-19 had changed their organizations forever. Interesting regional disparities: 63% of European companies said they expect to close branches or reduce headquarters offices compared with just 40% of U.S. and North Asian respondents. And U.S. companies were more likely to than others to prioritize cost over revenue as their main digital transformation goal.

Cloud data warehouse vendor Snowflake has confidentially filed for an Initial Public Offering, according to news reports. Snowflake is used by many CDP systems. Value could be as high as $20 billion.

There are still more grains of sand on the beach than vendors finding personal data in corporate databases but it’s starting to depend on the beach.

Microsoft today joined Amazon and IBM in limiting the privacy nightmare that is facial recognition software. IBM has left the business entirely, Amazon banned use by the police for one year, and Microsoft said they won’t sell for police use until a national regulation is in place. Yes, there’s some virtue signaling involved and there are plenty of other companies still in the business. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Data aggregator Neustar will provide identity resolution and data enrichment to CDP Quaero. The deal illustrates how third party data enables companies to find matches and make updates they could not discover with their own data alone.

Stirista also collects customer data for its clients to use in identity resolution and enhancement. They also sell prospect lists for online ad audiences and emails. Stirista just raised $13 million, which they’ll use to expand through growth and acquisitions.

As you’re well aware, Dear Reader, consumers have increasing rights to find out what data companies have gathered about them from Neustar, Stirista, and other sources. One result is a growing list of vendors who help companies to find that data in their systems so they can share it when asked. You can add Transcend to that list: they have emerged from beta with a $25 million Series A, bringing total funding to $29 million.

Paris-based mediarithmics, a rare hybrid of CDP and DMP, has raised €8 million ($9.1 million), to expand in the UK market. The round brings total funding to €12 million.

As marketers scramble for alternatives to tracking cookies, customer data vendor Zeotap has launched a universal identity initiative called ID+. Starting with Zeotap’s own global identity graph, the project will use hashed personal identifiers, such as email and phone numbers, to track individuals across ad channels without violating privacy rules. More than twenty organizations are supporting the program, which will also interoperate with other universal ID schemes.

Mobile attribution vendor AppsFlyer has announced Zero, a free service to measure results from a company’s owned media, such as its email, social media posts, and Web sites. The service uses “deep linking” to track visitor origins. AppsFlyer will still charge to track results from paid and earned media and for people-based attribution.

There have been several studies in recent days reporting that ad spend is recovering from the pandemic-driven lows of March. This particular one from Pixalate reports a 40% increase in April/May for programmatic ads for Over-the-Top (OTT) and Connected TV (CTV), compared with a 14% drop in March. Kids and Family apps on Roku grew by 128%.