CDP Institute

Changing the subject a bit, Engagement Labs found that there’s literally zero correlation between online and offline conversations about companies. Their message is that both are important but must be measured separately. Good point.

Data analysis requires so much, well, analysis. BI tool ThoughtSpot removes much of the drudgery by using AI to answer user questions and answer questions users should have thought to ask. They just raised $248 million, bringing their total raise to $554 million. Someone likes this idea.

B2B CDP CaliberMind also has some nifty AI capabilities. But their news for today is about deal with data vendor DiscoverOrg. CaliberMind users will get easy access to DisoverOrg data while DiscoverOrg clients can access CaliberMind’s engagement scores, ROI reports, and attribution measures. DiscoverOrg paints it as a step towards becoming a “comprehensive data platform”, whatever that may be.

We don’t usually cover CDP marketing ploys but we’ve never seen anyone give away a CDP as conference swag. Stop by the BlueVenn booth at DMEXCO, MarTech East, or Technology for Marketing next month and you might not get a free t-shirt but you will be able to enter a drawing for a free BlueVenn implementation and one-year license. The CDP Institute will present at all three events but we promise not to enter the contest.

We have a nice little trio of acquisitions today, Dear Reader. Closest to home for marketers, customer data compiler NetWise has bought competitors WhoToo from Demandbase, which itself purchased WhoToo in 2015. NetWise is moving from a white label model to selling its services directly.

Messaging platform Airship is buying Apptimize, a testing and optimization solution for messaging, Web sites, and smart TV channels. Apptimize lets marketers change iOS and Android apps without making code changes and then measure the results. Hours of fun.

Finally, Cisco announced a deal to buy CloudCherry, which provides call center agents with journey flows and predictive analytics. The system combines data from multiple source systems in real time. Of course, it would be better to read data from a CDP than maintain yet another set of point-to-point integrations.

Syncsort has purchased Pitney Bowes’ software solutions business, a collection of tools for customer analytics, data quality, personalization, interaction management, geocoding, and more. It illustrates the interest that general data management vendors are showing in customer data. Price was $700 million.

The tools that Syncsort just bought work mostly with first party data. They’ll come in handy as privacy protections reduce use of third party data for ad targeting. Digiday just published a handy overview of ad techniques that will soon be extinct. Rejoice or weep, depending on your perspective.

How much do consumers really care about privacy? Factual found that 60% are at least somewhat concerned, although their main worries are identity theft, fraud, and stolen passwords. A larger majority, 83%, have taken some action to protect their data. In general, about one third are open to sharing information in exchange for personalized treatment, one third are opposed, and one third don’t care much either way.

We were looking forward to Salesforce releasing a proper Customer Data Platform so they could start to educate rather than confuse the industry.

Google offered its own grand vision last week, this one aimed at making personalized ads compatible with privacy expectations. They cited studies that found traffic without cookies yielded 52% less revenue to publishers than traffic with cookies. Google would rely mostly on user consent, which has little impact because few users pay attention. But it also suggests techniques to do targeting without exposing individual data. Details here.