- Unified customer database: 70–90% of analyst pages, trade articles and vendor docs
- Marketing activation / audience building platform: 60–85% of vendor docs, blogs and many press releases
- Real-time/streaming profile & interaction engine: 30–60% depending on whether the source is vendor marketing (more likely) or neutral analyst articles (less likely to require “real-time”).
- Privacy, governance & identity management layer: 15–35%, increasingly present in analyst pieces and vendor positioning
- Part of a larger ‘data cloud’ or enterprise data stack: 10–30%, especially in vendor/marketing copy from big cloud vendors
These are categories that ChatGPT identified without me defining them in advance. So it's particularly interesting that there’s no mention of composability, warehouse-centricity, no-copy, hybrid, embedded, integrated, stand-alone, or other architectural details that have dominated recent industry discussions. In a way, this represents a failure by the CDP Institute to propagate our view that a CDP must build a separate database of its own. But a less parochial response is to be pleased that the main distinctions reflect system functions, which is where the focus belongs.
Of course, the variety of definitions is still problematic. While it’s usually safe to assume that a system labeled as a CDP will provide a unified customer database, it’s less certain that it will also offer marketing activation and downright dicey as to whether it will offer real-time streaming profiles and interactions. This means the label provides little useful guidance: imagine a can of soup labelled “contains tomatoes and maybe chicken and could also have mushrooms, rice or shrimp”. The only way to know what's inside would be to open it -- which defeats the purpose of a label.
(And, yes, the problem is worse for CDP than other categories. When I ran the same prompt for the term "customer relationship management software," a single answer dominated: 71% defined CRM as “a software/system/platform to manage customer interactions and data.” The next highest share was just 29% for “integrated suite (sales, marketing, service automation)”. It’s true that the dominant answer is exceptionally broad, but at least most people understand this and won’t expect anything more specific.)
So, although industry understanding has not been entirely destroyed by architectural debates, there is still enough disagreement on the scope of a CDP to limit the term’s utility. (If the CRM example is typical, it may be a natural progression for popular categories to expand their meaning over time. That would be an interesting hypothesis to explore if anyone out there is looking for a thesis topic.)
The industry could fight to restore a more specific CDP definition, but that’s probably a losing battle. It’s more likely productive to shift the discussion away from defining the term "CDP" to defining the functions required to manage customer data.
Yes, I’m proposing that the solution to our problem is a checklist. Don’t roll your eyes: whole books have been written on the topic. (Ok, maybe just one book.) But in an industry that has long been driven more by theory than practical requirements, anything that gets buyers to focus on what they actually need is a win.
Getting the industry to agree on a shared requirements checklist wouldn’t be easy, since every participant would want to add or remove items depending on whether their products supports them. Indeed, the very notion of a comprehensive requirements list favors broad, integrated products over narrow point solutions. But I’d still invest a few embers of hope in a project to forge a complete customer data framework. The potential benefits, for users and vendors alike, are well worth the effort.
*Here's the ChatGPT dialog:
Prompt: what are some common definitions for the term 'customer data platform'? Indicate how frequently the different definitions appear in sources such as trade publications, press releases, blogs, and social media posts.
Response: I sampled authoritative analyst sites, vendor docs, trade publications and typical vendor/blog explainers to pull together the common ways people define “Customer Data Platform (CDP)”, then estimated how often each definition shows up across those source types (trade press/analyst pieces, vendor press releases/docs, blogs, social posts). Below are the common definitions (short label + one-line meaning), an evidence-backed frequency estimate, and the strongest citations.
________________________________________
Common definitions of “Customer Data Platform” (with frequency estimates)
1. “Unified customer database” (the CDP core definition)
What it means: Packaged software that builds a persistent, unified customer database (stitches identity across sources) and makes that single customer view accessible to other systems.
How often it appears: Very common — ~70–90% of analyst pages, trade articles and vendor docs emphasize this as the defining feature.
Why / sources: This is the CDP Institute’s explicit definition and is echoed by major analyst glossaries. (CDP Institute)
2. “Marketing activation / audience building platform”
What it means: A system that not only unifies data but builds audiences/segments and activates them (syncs to email, ad networks, personalization engines) for marketing campaigns.
How often it appears: Very common — ~60–85% of vendor docs, blogs and many press releases emphasize activation as a key purpose.
Why / sources: Vendors and marketing-focused guides (Segment, Hightouch, Salesforce) present CDPs in these terms. (Segment)
3. “Real-time/streaming profile & interaction engine”
What it means: Emphasis on real-time ingestion, updating of profiles and immediate activation for personalization / real-time interactions.
How often it appears: Common — ~30–60% depending on whether the source is vendor marketing (more likely) or neutral analyst articles (less likely to require “real-time”). Many vendors promote “real-time CDP” capabilities.
Why / sources: Adobe, Salesforce and many vendor pages highlight real-time processing as a differentiator. (Adobe for Business)
4. “Privacy, governance & identity management layer”
What it means: CDP framed as a way to centralize consent, governance, and identity resolution for compliance and safer data sharing.
How often it appears: Occasional — ~15–35%, increasingly present in analyst pieces and vendor positioning as privacy/regulation matters grow.
Why / sources: CDP Institute discussions and recent vendor guides mention governance as important but not always the central definition. (CDP Institute)
5. “Part of a larger ‘data cloud’ or enterprise data stack” (broader/platform definition)
What it means: Some sources treat CDP as overlapping with or evolving into broader data-cloud/data-lake capabilities (enterprise data cloud that supports analytics, AI, and cross-org use, not only marketing).
How often it appears: Rising / context-dependent — ~10–30%, especially in vendor/marketing copy from big cloud vendors that bundle CDP features with broader data clouds.
Why / sources: Salesforce/Adobe messaging and some modern vendor blogs frame CDP within a larger data-cloud narrative. (Salesforce)
6. “Narrow ‘marketing-only’ vs broad platform debate”
What it means: Some authors contrast CDPs that are strictly marketer-focused (audience building + activation) with systems that are more IT/analytics-focused (which some call Customer Data Infrastructure rather than CDP).
How often it appears: Common in commentary/blogs — ~25–50%, especially in independent analyst/blog posts arguing about scope.
Why / sources: Independent guides and blog explainers highlight this debate. (Salesforce Ben)
________________________________________
Quick guide to where each definition shows up most often
• Trade publications & analyst glossaries (Gartner, CDP Institute, Forrester pieces): emphasize unified database, identity resolution and standard criteria (CDP Institute/Gartner). (CDP Institute)
• Vendor press releases / product pages (Salesforce, Adobe, Segment, Hightouch): emphasize activation, real-time processing, and enterprise/marketing use cases — vendors often broaden the definition to include features they sell. (Salesforce)
• Blogs / explainers (independent and vendor blogs): often present a practical, functional definition (“collect, unify, activate”) and discuss implementation tradeoffs; they also host the “marketing vs data-platform” debate. (hightouch.com)
• Social media (Twitter/LinkedIn threads, product announcements): shorter, use-case driven framings (e.g., “CDP = audience building + sync”), vendor threads hype product differentiators (realtime, privacy). Frequency estimates are noisier here but themes mirror vendor/blog messaging.
________________________________________
Methods & confidence
• Method: I sampled canonical analyst definitions (CDP Institute, Gartner), major vendor pages (Salesforce, Adobe, Segment, Hightouch), and representative blog/explainer pages. I then categorized recurring definition themes and estimated how often each theme appears across source types.
• Confidence: Moderate–high for the major categories (unified database; activation for marketing), moderate for newer/marketing-spin categories (real-time emphasis; data-cloud framing). The percentage figures above are approximate — they’re meant as quick directional estimates, not exact counts — because the corpus (web) is large and vendor language shifts fast.
________________________________________
Short takeaway (one sentence)
Most authoritative definitions center on a CDP as packaged software that creates a persistent, unified customer database that marketers and systems can use — with many vendors and blogs adding that a CDP also builds audiences and activates them (often in real time), and some vendors now frame CDPs as part of larger “data cloud” offerings. (CDP Institute)
No comments:
Post a Comment