MarTech approaches, Sitecore’s CDP: Thursday’s daily brief

MarTech’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s digital marketing leader. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, Have you registered for MarTech yet?

Before we get into that, first allow me to introduce myself. I’m Kathy Bushman, Director, Events Content at Third Door Media. That means I work closely with our editorial team to craft the educational programs and seek out skilled and diverse speakers for the MarTech series of events. You’ll see me in this newsletter a couple of times a month writing about different topics relating to events.

I’ve been programming educational business events and working with speakers for a number of years. I find the most rewarding part is when someone says that something they learned at the event or one particular session will make a big difference to them in their job or for their business.That’s what we’re always striving to do when selecting topics and speakers for the MarTech events and this time is no different. MarTech will take place virtually on March 15-16. There will be many informative sessions including a focus of sessions on marketing automation, customer data platforms, digital asset management and predictive analytics and attribution. We have experts talking about not only how to buy the technology but also how to integrate it into your stack and how to staff and manage it.

So back to my question. Have you registered for MarTech yet? It’s free so there’s nothing to lose and you might just find that one tip that will make a big difference to your job or business this year.

Kathy Bushman,

Director, Events Content

Google will not build or use alternate identifiers to track users across the web

Google has doubled down on its Privacy Sandbox with the announcement this week that it will not participate in the development of alternative identifiers, and will not use them. Alternative identifiers, such as Unified ID 2.0 (developed by The Trade Desk) and LiveRamp’s ATS typically work by attempting to associate online behavior with a piece of first-party data like an email address, making addressable advertising possible — at least for those individuals who have somehow made themselves known.

Google said that “People shouldn’t have to accept being tracked across the web in order to get the benefits of relevant advertising.” But the main development emerging from the Privacy Sandbox, known as FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts) does precisely that. It just doesn’t store the tracking data in a way which associates it with an individual (even an anonymized individual), but aggregates it into a behavioral cohort (a large group of individuals) stored at the browser level. In other words, advertisers will be able to target not an individual who has been researching a certain kind of shoe purchase, say, but a large group of individuals who have been exhibiting that behavior.

Many questions remain to be answered about FLoC — in particular, whether Google will have any privileged insight into the users grouped into a cohort. It might also be hard to convince consumers why this particular kind of tracking is no threat to privacy. But for now, Google has made its opposition to competing methods of tracking identities clear.

Why we care. With the battle between Facebook and Apple over the IDFA opt-in, and now the spectacle of Google’s outright opposition to alternative identifiers being developed by the adtech industry, disruption rather than collaboration within the adtech space continues to be the order of the day.

Read more here.

Tips for getting your session pitch noticed

Have you been submitting session pitches but haven’t been selected to speak? Or maybe you’re just now considering applying to speak at an industry or local event and don’t know where to start. Here are some tips to consider.

1. Start with your own goals. Think about why you want to speak and what types of events are a good fit with your expertise.
2. Once you identify those events, learn everything you can about them. Determine if there is a theme, if they are looking for specific types of sessions or topics, look at past programs. Talk to other people who may have spoken at that event. It’s even better if they can make an introduction or recommend you.
3. Now it’s time to submit your idea. Succinctly describe what you will talk about, but more importantly focus on what the audience will be able to do as a result of attending your presentation. Be as specific as possible and include any real-life examples and case studies you have to share.
4. Be realistic about what you can present in the time allotted. Going in-depth on a narrow topic is often more valuable than going too broad and not providing actionable takeaways.
5. When submitting your bio keep it short and include any relevant work experience that shows your expertise on the topic. If you have spoken at other events or have speaking videos include them.
6. Hit submit and good luck!

The landscape that 2020 asked for  

Scott Brinker shared this on LinkedIn this week and it’s notable for two reasons:

1. You can see how much growth and competition there exists in the all-in-one space
2. All of the components are available if you choose to skip those all-in-one providers and compile your events stack yourself.

Here’s why we went with the stack approach

Sitecore makes CDP, headless ecommerce acquisitions

With today’s announcement that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Dublin-based Boxever, Sitecore will become the latest ecommerce and CMS provider to include an integrated CDP as part of its offering. As part of the same announcement, Sitecore will also acquire Minneapolis-based ecommerce platform Four51. Four51’s API-driven, headless solution delivers customer experience directly to a range of channels and devices. Sitecore is describing this as complementary to their existing solutions.

These acquisitions follow on the heels of Sitecore’s attention-grabbing $1.2 billion funding round in January, which suggests that CEO Steve Tzikakis had a wish-list clearly in mind. The cost of the acquisitions, which are expected to close by the end of March, has not been disclosed.

Why we care. As we’ve said before, with adoption of digital commerce expanding, even among verticals never considered digital-first, the race between ecommerce vendors is white hot, with Episerver acquiring (and then re-branding as) Optimizely, and now these moves by Sitecore. 

Read More here.  

Quote of the day

“The mute button on Zoom is broken. I keep stabbing it and other people keep talking.” Mitch Wagner, Senior Writer, Content Central, Oracle.