CDP Institute

Lots of interesting reports this week. PR agency Walker Sands and Chief Martec Scott Brinker issued their third annual State of Marketing Technology report, which is always full of useful information. Most interesting from a CDP perspective was a table showing 63% of responders said they have a CDP in place. Not likely but still a sign of how popular the term has become.

CMO Council is another reliable source of good surveys. They just published a 107-page behemoth on how well companies are using their data. The short answer is, not very: most are spending money on data management tools but few have seen significant return on their investment. Marketers listed lack of a single customer view as their biggest obstacle to gaining value from data.

Integration platform SnapLogic put a dollar value on companies’ data tech investments and the benefits of success. They found the average business will double its spend on data activation to $1.7 million in five years and expects to add $5.2 million revenue in return. Customer data was ranked as most valuable by 69% of respondents, far ahead of IT data (50%) and internal financial data (40%).

You might have noticed that yesterday’s lead story about our latest industry update was a repeat of a story from last week. Clever repromotion, you thought. But if you clicked on the link, you were offered our new report on the European CDP industry instead. We’ll admit: it was all a mistake. Clearly someone needs a vacation. Once and for all: you can download the global report here and the European report here.

Programmatic adtech vendor MediaMath has announced $225 million in new financing, bringing their total to over $600 million per Crunchbase. Perhaps more interesting is they plan to spend a good part of it on customer identity tracking.

Voice and text analytics vendor Topbox has raised $5 million for its own expansion. They specialize in converting unstructured interaction data such as call transcripts and social media posts into structured forms that can analyzed. That’s really tough, in case you were wondering.

The CDP Institute has released its semi-annual industry update, analyzing vendors we’ve identified as CDPs. Big trend is systems that offer analytics and engagement in addition to the core CDP database. Many inscrutable charts.

Here’s a head scratcher: tech advisory firm Forrester has purchased two tech companies of its own. Customer response collector FeedbackNow makes those “smiley boxes” you see in airports. AI vendor Glimpzit does analytics. The products will be part of a “real-time CX cloud” to help companies monitor and improve experience.

We don’t usually let Jamie, our Department of the Obvious intern, look at academic research because there’s so much obviousness that he gets overexcited and then needs a nap. But he somehow uncovered this study, which found that people will exercise more if you pay them. We thought it might be a joke but apparently it’s legitimate.

Autonomous marketing campaign builder Albert Technologies has raised an $18 million funding round. Albert uses artificial intelligence to select optimal campaign channels, segments, and contents from feeds provided by its clients. The firm had already raised $42 million in 2015 when it was called Adgorithms.