Interoperable cookieless IDs and App Annie’s AI tool: Wednesday’s daily brief

Plus, the difference between B2C and B2B marketing

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Good morning, marketers, and here’s to bringing order to chaos.

Chaos may be too strong a term to apply to the developing alternative identity space where a range of vendors are trying to save addressability before the third-party cookie is finally cast into the dustbin of history. But there are a lot of vendors working on solutions.

What’s more, the same vendors are at the same time working on their own solutions, and participating in industry-wide discussions about developing a common standard. Right now the mood seems to be: “Let’s try everything and hope something works.” The concern is palpable.

An alternative to an industry-wide standard is a degree of interoperability between proprietary standards. The first story below describes Tapad’s initiative in that direction. But remind me: how is the industry doing developing common data standards? Yes, it’s trying: or some of the platforms are.

Kim Davis
Editorial Director

Tapad seeks to make cookieless IDs interoperable  

We’ve been covering the rapid development of alternatives to the third-party cookie, hitherto a critical factor in marketers’ ability to track and re-target consumers. We’ve discussed proposals coming out of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, and talked about the bewildering profusion of alternative identity solutions coming onto the market.

Yesterday’s news from Tapad represented an attempt to bring order to the situation by developing a module to connect data from different identity solutions from different vendors. The new module, Switchboard, is supported by a number of vendors in the space, including The Trade Desk and Lotame. The purpose is not to aggregate data from these partners to create a single “uber-identity,” but simply to allow these separate identities to communicate.

The benefit is that a publisher or advertiser leveraging identity data from more than one provider can derive a holistic view of their audience. Tapad hopes to grow the list of partners, and there are some major identity providers yet to sign up.

Read more here.

App Annie launches AI-driven mobile app  

App analytics and data suite App Annie has announced the availability of App Annie Pulse, a mobile app which provides rapid access to app market trends and competitive insights. 

Powered by AI, the app features a customizable App Annie Performance score, a composite metric based on a series of parameters which help businesses benchmark app performance. The parameters can include sentiment, acquisition, monetization, and engagement metrics, and can be configured according to preference.

Why we care. The volume of business conducted on mobile devices, and especially in app, is only going to grow. It seems appropriate to have real-time metrics on app performance delivered via an app.

The differences between B2C and B2B buyers

A great discussion started by Dave Gerhardt, currently CMO at Privy, and well-known for his years as VP Marketing at Drift. B2C and B2B are both about selling to people; the only real difference is that B2B is about selling to people who work at a company. Shama Hyder of ZenMedia disagreed, identifying a big difference: “In a B2C transaction, the consumer is trying to avoid regret. In a B2B transaction, the buyer is trying to avoid blame.”

Growth strategist Jeff Davis added: “B2B = Selling to people that have to reach a consensus with other people. [This] captures the importance of not only selling to the immediate stakeholder but giving them the language to sell appropriately inside the organization when you are not present in the conversation.” 

To which Mark Stouse of Proof Analytics responded: “That’s the entire premise behind the best ABM programs — helping build consensus in the customer team by helping them move beyond their own self-interest so they can see how the purchase of X not only helps them but everyone else too. The problem is that too many ABM programs message to personas in ways that reinforce their self-interest, even unknowingly.”

The conversation is taking place here.

Quote of the day

“We listen too much to people who claim to have answers and not enough to those who ask good questions.” Jarrett Walker, public transit consultant.


About the author

Kim Davis
Staff
Kim Davis is currently editor at large at MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for almost three decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Shortly thereafter he joined Third Door Media as Editorial Director at MarTech.

Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.

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