CDP Institute

What’s that? You just can’t read enough about artificial intelligence? Ok, then here’s more: a very good Forrester study, sponsored by Amplero. General finding was marketers see AI as helping overcome otherwise-unmanageable data volumes. But attitudes are mixed: while 86% believe AI can provide value, 78% think human intervention is necessary to guide AI, 42% fear AI could make their job irrelevant, and 36% don’t think AI in marketing is “currently real”.

Here’s another good study, although it’s not about AI.

When Microsoft paid $26 billion for LinkedIn last year, the possibilities for leveraging LinkedIn data seemed endless. Yesterday the company filled in some of the details with product announcements including CRM data validation and integration of Sales Navigator with LinkedIn advertising campaigns and nearly two dozen business intelligence, marketing automation, sales acceleration and other vendors.  While Microsoft had already integrated Sales Navigator with its own Dynamics CRM, these announcements make clear that competitive products won’t be frozen out.

Speaking of data integration, we also have news that B2B Customer Data Platform and Account Based Marketing vendor ZenIQ has a new partnership to ingest Bombora’s intent data. It’s an interesting example of loading third party data into a CDP to supplement a company’s own first party data.

Switching to consumer data integration, we have a very interesting study from cross-device identity vendor LiveRamp about how marketers are using individual-level identity resolution to better measure performance. Nearly everyone (94%) said cross-media identity resolution is needed to accurately assess marketing performance, while just 21% had people-based measurement in place. Almost half (42%) didn’t know how to get started. Other interesting data too.

Today is 10/10, which makes it Duopoly Day and thus a good time to indulge my obsession with Google/Facebook and walled garden vendors in general.

More bad news for the duopolists: Apple’s latest Safari update makes it easier to block third party cookies used for cross-site tracking. They’re especially important for Facebook and Google. Decide for yourself whether Apple is being an altruistic protector of consumer privacy or cementing control over its customers by blocking out competitors.

But how much do advertisers really care about their life-threatening dependence on the duopolists? Not very, according to this article from Digiday. Their reporter found that “senior marketers, for the most part, shrugged off Google and Facebook’s domination of media” while settling for minor concessions on brand safety and measurement. What can I say?

It’s pretty small potatoes when an existing vendor adds a single new feature.

It’s also not very surprising to find that personal data is available for sale!

Here’s a more conventional item: a product launch. The vendor is Spatially, which provides businesses with location-tagged consumer data. They just added the ability to run geo-targeted ad campaigns in Google AdWords and Facebook.

We all know that retailers face massive change, but sometimes don’t recognize how aggressively many are responding. This study from BRP Consulting found that 51% now offer same day delivery, up from just 16% a year ago. About one-quarter have other advanced capabilities such as promotions based on real time events and identifying customers within the store. Lots of other interesting information.