CDP Institute

Let’s do news from CDP vendors today. Tealium announced new capabilities to stream data into cloud computing platforms including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Key benefits include real-time data collection, prebuilt connectors for more than 1,000 source systems, and transformation of data before it is fed into destination systems.

Next: Datorama added a connector to social intelligence aggregator DataSift. Specifically, Datorama customers will be able to load anonymized and aggregated LinkedIn data gathered by DataSift and exposed through its Media Strategies API. DataSift launched the API last month and has several partners using it. Datorama integrates and exposes customer data from multiple sources.  This makes it a true CDP, although the company focuses primarily on using the data for marketing performance measurement.

And one more: AgilOne has placed its Customer Data and Engagement Hub on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, offering an integration to deliver messages through Oracle Responsys. Oracle still draws its Marketing Cloud with the BlueKai DMP in the position of a CDP, but clients who want a real CDP will need something like AgilOne.

Back in April, Experian announced it was selling a majority stake its cross-channel marketing unit to Vector Capital and Peter McCormick, co-founder of ExactTarget. The new company just announced its name will be Cheetah Digital, restoring the CheetahMail brand that was the core of the Experian unit. The new operation will offer a SaaS-based digital marketing platform that assembles customer data and executes cross-channel campaigns.

One big change since CheetahMail was founded in 1999 is that emails can update their contents each time they’re opened by calling external servers. Powerinbox uses this to embed targeted ads within emails. The company licenses the technology to email service providers and has now launched a premium ad network of its own called InboxChoice.

Email marketers just want to do better email.  A survey from email vendor Emma found that 37% said they most want to do more targeted marketing, compared with just 23% who wanted to do cross-channel campaigns. Automating more work and content testing tied for last at 12%. The biggest barriers were lack of staff (34%) and time (30%), far ahead of inadequate data (16%) or software (10%). Other interesting data in there too.

Customer Data Platform vendor Segment has introduced Cross Domain Analytics, which lets brands track customer activity across their own digital properties by using second party (i.e., shared) cookies. This lets them avoid reliance on third party cookies owned by other companies. Segment notes that second party cookies are less likely to be blocked than third party cookies, providing more complete information. The downside is Cross Domain Analytics won’t track customers across other companies’ properties.

Fast-growing journey orchestration vendor Autopilot has received $12 million in funding, bringing its total to $32 million. Unlike conventional marketing automation systems, Autopilot draws on data stored externally through integrations including Segment, Zapier and Salesforce.com. In fact, Salesforce Ventures is among the new investors. Autopilot reports more than 2,300 customers.

There’s more to marketing today than talking to people. Covisint manages identities and messaging among machines as well as humans. It’s especially well connected in the automobile industry. The company just agreed to be bought for $103 million by enterprise information management vendor OpenText.

SAP has announced new suites of customer experience and data management applications. The customer experience suite, C/4HANA, unifies marketing, commerce, service, sales, and customer data products including Gigya and Callidus Cloud acquisitions. The HANA Data Management Suite collects all kinds of data, including customer information.

Native advertising platform Outbrain, which inserts those ‘you might interested in’ links on your favorite Web sites, has purchased AdNgin, which automatically optimizes ad layouts. One optimizes content and the other optimizes design. It’s a perfect match!

You knew it was National Optimization Day, right? Scaled Inference, an AI start-up in stealth since 2014, is launching Amp.ai, a self-learning optimization platform that picks the best Web site and app actions based on context and user-defined goals. Meanwhile, Boostify has unified its collection of widgets for things like chat, data capture, calls to action, and social proof to create a conversion rate optimization platform. It’s supported by shared services for visitor tracking, segmentation, campaigns, goal tracking, and reporting.