Martech strategy that survives contact with the stack

CDP & CEP pricing strategies for the uninitiated

CDPs charge for the data you hold. CEPs charge for the actions you take. “Usage” sounds simple, but every vendor defines it differently. The Hidden Logic of Martech Pricing reveals what those definitions really mean for your budget and your business.

Every vendor promises the same thing “you only pay for what you use”.

It’s a comforting line, one that suggests control and fairness. But in Martech, especially when you look at Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Customer Engagement Platforms (CEPs), the definition of use changes depending on who you ask.

Most CDPs still price around data management, how many profiles you store, how many events you collect, or how many systems you connect. It’s a model born from infrastructure.

Meanwhile, CEPs are leading the move toward usage-based pricing, a model

Aampe and DOJO AI show why AI-native marketing starts with people, not tools

AI-native marketing won’t fix marketing’s problems, but it might fix how teams work. From Aampe’s change management approach to DOJO AI’s human-in-the-loop philosophy, the real transformation starts inside the organization, not the model.

As I stated on LinkedIn last week, it was a wild week of news. Lee Hammond mapped the chaos in a post on LinkedIn after his visit to CDP World, while David Raab imagined the redesign after challenging ChatGPT. And somewhere between the two, I found myself in a demo with Aampe, realizing just how hard it is to think differently.

Towards the end, I stopped Aampe’s Amaan Kulatunga and admitted, almost out loud:

I’m still trying to fit this into campaign logic.

I was still thinking like a marketer from 2015. And that, I suspect, is what

From ad servers to AI: a reality check with Infolinks Media CEO Bob Regular

Three decades of adtech evolution and why the next big leap won’t come from a single prompt.

Before “programmatic” was a word, Bob Regular was already in the trenches of digital advertising. Today, as CEO of Infolinks Media, he’s seen enough hype cycles to know that progress takes patience and a sense of humor.

We talked about the rise and fall of the dot-com bubble, the long road from cookies to context, and the strange reality that AI may make media buying both smarter and more commoditized. Bob also shared a sharp view on regulation, calling out how well-intentioned privacy laws ended up suffocating smaller publishers while barely protecting users.

If you’ve ever

When a Martech guy walks into AdTech... and lives to tell the tale.

I was entirely out of my depth in this one. Sitting down with AdLib co-founder Mike Hauptman turned into more than just an AdTech crash course.

I’m a complete novice when it comes to AdTech and raising my two teenage kids. And Mike brought me up to speed on one of those topics.

Programmatic, DSPs, audience segments… it’s always sounded like a parallel universe to the Martech world I live in.

So when I sat down with Mike Hauptman, co-founder and CEO of AdLib DSP, I treated it as a chance to get schooled and he didn’t disappoint.

We talked about how programmatic advertising actually works, why it got so complicated, and how AdLib is trying to make it as easy as

Ten reasons to bring in outside expertise for your CDP RFP

...and why your team will thank you.

I’ll be honest, I usually dislike “top ten” style articles. They tend to oversimplify complex decisions and make it sound like ticking boxes will magically solve everything. But after publishing my last three pieces, on dating vendors, reference calls, and surviving the RFP process, I kept hearing the same question: why bring in outside help at all?

So, against my better instincts, here’s a list. Not because every company will face all ten of these issues, but because most will recognize at least a few of them. And if even one sounds true to you, it might be

Can an AI marketing OS really think like a CMO?

Inside my demo with Dojo AI, from Lucky Saint campaigns to zebra striping trends

I sat down with Duarte Garrido and Luke Costly-White to see what DOJO AI calls an “all-in-one AI Marketing Operating System”. Big claims, but then again, these are undoubtedly “big claim” days we are living in, so I wanted to see what that actually looks like in practice.

Luke’s story already makes this demo interesting. Luke began as a DOJO power user, then became an angel investor, and now works at the very company he backed (for those who read my piece on reference calls with angel investors: this one isn’t on the sidelines anymore)

Posts tagged with Martech strategy