CDP Institute

As you might have guessed from the previous item, it’s a slow news day. So here’s a good piece from Adweek about brand marketers building their own audience databases so they are less reliant on Google and Facebook. It’s a core CDP use case. The author works for cross-device identity solution Drawbridge.

Nearly half of B2C marketers (46%) fail to collect transactional data and just over half (55%) don’t collect behavioral data, according to a study released by CDP vendor BlueVenn exclusively to the CDP Institute. Age (76%), location (75%) and gender (70%) are more common but 57% of marketers do not combine their data into a unified customer view and nearly 40% don’t personalize Web or email content. Download for more interesting results.

Customer identity mapping specialist Adbrain has expanded its system to map identities across devices, people, and locations. This lets Adbrain build groups of individuals within a household or frequently visiting a given location. Adbrain builds its identity maps with data from multiple third party sources. Adbrain doesn’t collect personal identifiers, but clients can match their own data to Adbrain’s information,.

Retail Wifi marketing and analytics vendor Bloom Intelligence has added new metrics to its platform. Bloom Intelligence installs Wifi systems for use by in-store customers and provides marketing features including behavior-triggered promotions while the customer is on-site. Bloom Intelligence is part of Captiveyes, which runs indoor digital advertising systems.

Web content management vendor Crownpeak has purchased Evidon, which helps companies capture and manage consumer data on Web sites. Evidon’s capabilities are particularly important as companies work to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the May 2018 deadline.

Many online retailers are missing basic personalization opportunities, including recently viewed item lists (not found on 40% of sites) and personalized recommendations (unavailable at 47% of sites if users were not signed in), according to a study by ecommerce platform vendor Kibo. More than 40% don’t send cart abandonment emails. The study also looked at integration of in-store and online experiences including pricing and signage.

One reason retailers don’t do personalization is it’s too complicated. Artificial intelligence is expected to help, according to a Forrester study for ecommerce platform vendor Emarsys. Intelligent recommendations was the second-most planned application for AI (40%), following analytics (43%). Using AI to personalize customer experiences across channels was the most common application expected to be implemented within the next twelve months (81%).

Marketing automation and CRM vendor HubSpot acquired Kemvi, which uses machine learning to scan online content for insights about sales prospects. Since pretty much every vendor now uses AI in some way, what’s interesting here is seeing HubSpot double down on its efforts to support sales rather than marketing users.

Yep, another AI-related acquisition: B2C marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global bought Boomtrain, a machine-learning-driven personalization platform. Zeta’s ambitions to compete with Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce were bolstered by $140 million in new funding this past April, bringing total funding to $380 million since 2012.

Maybe it would be easier to specify when items are NOT AI-related. Here’s one of those: Proov offers a platform that lets companies run “proof of concept” projects on without the usual hassle of custom deployment. It’s a super-clever idea, removing one of the main friction points in the purchase process for large tech investments. How closely Proov can mimic a custom POC is another question, but it’s certainly worth a look. The company just raised $14 million, bringing total funding to $21 million.

One of the most astonishing trends of the past few decades has been people’s seemingly bottomless appetite for consuming more media.

One reason media time might decline is the growth of alternative interfaces, notably voice devices like Amazon Alexa.