Customer data platforms (CDPs) are having a moment. According to MarTech Today’s industry landscape, there were 25 CDPs in 2017, up from 12 in 2016. The demand for CDPs is being bolstered by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which becomes enforceable in May and stipulates that people’s data can only be used if they give a company explicit permission.
There is a fair amount of overlap between CDPs, data management platforms (DMPs) and customer relationship management platforms (CRMs), which are all used to store people’s data. CDPs’ main point of differentiation is that they deal exclusively with first-party data, whereas the other types of platforms tend to specialize in third-party data. While many marketing tech companies are likely going to get slapped by the GDPR, CDPs’ pitch is that they are less likely to be at risk of getting fined because of their first-party focus.
The GDPR is driving marketers to first-party data handlers at a time when anxiety is high over the new regulation. In a spring 2017 survey from Veritas, 32% of business decision-makers worldwide were concerned that they didn’t have the right tools in place to monitor data as they prepared for the GDPR. Read the rest at eMarketer.
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