It’s an odd news day, Dear Reader: several sets of related stories but no clear lead. We’ll start with news that B2B contact aggregator ZoomInfo has purchased Datanyze, which identifies the technologies that companies use. The day before, ZoomInfo announced purchase of Israel-based Y Labs, a small start-up of indeterminate nature. ZoomInfo itself was purchased by private equity firm Grant Hill Partners for $240 million in 2017.
You were supremely uninterested in yesterday’s news about B2B technographic data, Dear Reader. Let’s see if B2C new is more to your liking. We’ll start with a $4 million Series A funding for DataGrail, which helps companies map where personal data is stored in their systems and show it to customers who ask. This is required by GDPR today and probably other rules tomorrow. It’s a common use case for Customer Data Platforms.
Personal identity vendor LiveRamp has added an API to integrate its AbiliTec offline identity resolution platform with external systems. Its press release features quotes from CDPs BlueConic and RedPoint Global as sample users. This highlights an often-misunderstood fact: many CDPs rely on external technology for identity resolution, in part because identity resolution often uses external data with connections not available within a company’s own data.
CDP and data solutions provider Zeotap is adding the ID5 ID to its identity graph. The ID5 identifier supports individual-level programmatic ad targeting without relying on third-party cookies, extending the reach of Zeotap ad segments.