CDP Institute

Here’s a peculiar item: three industry groups have formed an initiative to create “quality label” for marketing data, similar to the nutrition labels on food packages. Participants include the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) and The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), plus 15 big compilers and users of marketing data. The label would disclose source, collection, recency, and “compliance signals” with industry and legal standards. Presumably the underlying motivation is to ease concerns about liability for using data that violates GDPR.

Indeed, the looming GDPR deadline has concentrated the minds of advertisers on data quality. DigiDay reports advertisers and agencies are demanding proof that data was acquired in GDPR-compliant fashion. The net result may be to remove marginal data sources from the marketplace (good) and to increase the power of data gathering giants like Google and Facebook (maybe not so good).

I’ll spare you yet another survey on lack of preparation for GDPR and instead point to this Forrester study, done for Dun & Bradstreet, reminding us why collecting data is worth the trouble. Forrester rated respondents on data management maturity and found leaders are roughly twice as successful as laggards at uncovering new business opportunities, personalizing customer experience, measuring campaign results, and buying the right technology. Leaders also outperformed laggards at improving metrics ranging from sales cycle speed to customer lifetime value. You get the idea: good data pays.

Cisco is paying $270 million for Accompany, which uses AI to build profiles of business decision makers and map their connections. They’ll integrate the data with their collaboration products, most notably WebEx. The deal may be more about AI talent than data: Accompany founder Amy Chang, who sat on Cisco’s board until the purchase, will take charge of Cisco’s collaboration business. Total funding for Accompany was $40.6 million.

Cross-channel identity company Barometric has launched a solution to measure the impact of print advertising on online and in-store purchases. It will leverage Barometric’s proprietary database connecting 94 million U.S. postal addresses to 600 million devices. Barometric was spun off from adtech vendor AdTheorent just last month.

UrboLabs would eliminate print ads by connecting consumers directly with merchants. The vision is a tad grandiose (“become a single consolidated platform for users to interact with the world around them”) but they do have a cute map-based interface that lets consumers pick the businesses they want to hear from. They just launched in New York and New Jersey and received an undisclosed amount of new funding. Don’t confuse them with Urbo the bike sharing service or Urbo the parking meter payment system.

Data quality vendor Validity has purchased CRMfusion, which provides similar software for Salesforce.com. Validity also announced a funding round but didn’t say how much.

Millennial tech buyers are more brand-loyal than previous generations, according to this study from Spiceworks.

Are you sad this newsletter hasn’t been covering Facebook’s privacy troubles in detail? Then you’re in luck: here’s a detailed look from Raab Associates at items you might have missed and some perspective on what it might all mean. You’re welcome.

Marketing automation vendor Marketo has acquired B2B multi-attribution specialist Bizible for an undisclosed price. Bizible was already integrated with Marketo, as well as Marketo competitors including Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Pardot, Oracle Eloqua, Act-On and HubSpot.

Product analytics vendor Amplitude has added the ability to track individual customers across multiple products. Yep, sounds like a Customer Data Platform. Interestingly, they have integrations using the mParticle and Segment CDPs as data collectors.

Sorry about that headline; I couldn’t resist. Namogoo prevents what it calls “online journey hijacking”, which is injection of unauthorized ads and content by third party services running on a brand Web site. They just raised a $15 million Series B, bringing their total raise to $28 million.