Privacy, fraud, and other concerns may loom but the third party data industry had a great 2018, growing by 17.5% over the previous year, according to a Winterberry Group study for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Total spending on data and solutions was nearly $19.2 billion. Data management solutions, which includes Customer Data Platforms, grew by 25% to just under $5.0 billion. Download for details.
We’ll cover funding news today because there’s not much else and everybody likes money, right? Biggest first: data analysis platform Looker raised a $103 million Series E, bringing its total to $280.5 million since 2013. You do have to wonder why a flat $100 million wasn’t enough.
Finally – wait, we’re out of CDP news. So let’s finish with news that consumer products giant Unilever is funding free showers and other hygiene services for homeless people across the USA. It’s both on-brand (they make soap) and bold (no brand wants to be preferred by street people everywhere). Good for them for knowing what’s important.
Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation. The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.