customer data platform - Martech Therapy (Page 5)

Is the CDP binary broken?

Multi CDP Part 1: Why Dual Zone thinking matters now, more than ever.

There was a time, brief and overly PowerPointed, when the Customer Data Platform (CDP) was sold as the answer to everything: clean data, unified profiles, cross-channel orchestration, even internal peace treaties between marketing and IT.

One platform. One profile. One truth.

And then reality showed up.

Not with a bang, but with two CDPs.

The CDP Institute’s 2024 Member Survey reports an average of 2.1 CDPs per company, and Simon Data observes a drop from 2.9 to 2.1 based on that data. That might look like consolidation (down from 2.9 the year before), but it

Everyone wants clean data, no one wants to take out the trash

Why, in my opinion, “actionable data ownership” should be the most radical thing in Martech right now!

There’s a certain absurdity to how we talk about data. We obsess over real-time pipelines, predictive models, AI *cough* that promise to know our customers better than we know ourselves… and then completely sidestep the question of who’s actually responsible for the data in the first place.

And this is why Avo’s latest announcement matters more than it probably should. “Actionable Data Ownership” isn’t a sexy product drop, I mean it does contain the letters ‘A’ and ‘I’, but it’s a blunt instrument aimed at one of the most deeply neglected problems in Martech.

⚠️ This

Don’t let your CDP become the Fall Guy

Five things you can do right now to make your data work harder.

The CDP market is taking a breather.

I was recently speaking to an industry leader who told me:

“I think the whole CDP space has quietly ground to a halt… We’re seeing no more than 3–5 new opportunities per quarter. Lowest number ever.”

Funding has dried up, unless you are adding the “AI” label to a new feature. Sales cycles have slowed. Implementations are dragging. And the next big thing? It’s not here yet. AI might be “le mot du jour” (French for “word of the day”) of the moment, but it’s not the thing replacing

Humans, not tools - A Martech podcast about the real stuff

Phil Gamache on podcasting as therapy, measuring what matters, and why being opinionated at 4am might just land you a guest slot.

Phil Gamache said, “I ask questions like an analyst, but I listen like an operator.” And that’s exactly why I invited him onto Couch Confidentials, for quotes like that. At the end of the day we are all trying to achieve the same.

He doesn’t just host Humans of Martech, he’s built a platform that holds up a mirror to the way we actually work. The late-night migrations. The marketing ops arguments. The tools that break quietly while no one’s watching. His podcast is not about frameworks or vendor checklists, it’s about people trying to

Shopify isn’t enough

…and deep down, you already know that.

There’s a moment that creeps in somewhere between “should I try another email pop-up plugin?” and “why don’t my reports ever answer real questions?” It’s a quiet realization. The platform that made it beautifully easy to launch your store might not be built to help you scale your marketing or understand your customers beyond last Tuesday’s sale.

Shopify does many things well. It’s clean, manageable, and doesn’t ask you to learn code or bribe a developer friend. It’s perfect for what it is: a commerce platform. Not a data platform. Not a campaign

The evolution of Omni-Man

From debugging eVars to preaching composable gospel -> Adam Greco's 25-year journey through martech's identity crisis

I finally sat down with Adam Greco for what turned into one of those conversations that explains how we got to this beautiful disaster we call modern martech.

Adam earned the nickname "Omni-Man" back when he was basically Adobe Analytics incarnate, the guy who could fix your broken implementations and somehow make eVars seem less like a cruel joke played on marketers by bored engineers. For years, he was the poster child for mastering one platform completely.

Which makes his current crusade for composable CDPs either beautifully ironic or perfectly logical, depending on whether you've had your coffee yet.

His

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