We’ve been covering the rapid development of alternatives to the third-party cookie, hitherto a critical factor in marketers’ ability to track and re-target consumers. We’ve discussed proposals coming out of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox, and talked about the bewildering profusion of alternative identity solutions coming onto the market.

Yesterday’s news from Tapad represented an attempt to bring order to the situation by developing a module to connect data from different identity solutions from different vendors. The new module, Switchboard, is supported by a number of vendors in the space, including The Trade Desk and Lotame. The purpose is not to aggregate data from these partners to create a single “uber-identity,” but simply to allow these separate identities to communicate.

The benefit is that a publisher or advertiser leveraging identity data from more than one provider can derive a holistic view of their audience. Tapad hopes to grow the list of partners, and there are some major identity providers yet to sign up.

Read more here.

Marketers have a lot to consider when shopping for martech solutions. To make the right decisions, business leaders weigh a number of factors including flexibility and ease of use. A tool that might be easy to use may lack the flexibility to integrate seamlessly with your existing stack. But a tool that is overly flexible can sometimes easily break and become a headache for end-users. How do you find the right balance? Join this webinar and learn when to prioritize flexibility in a martech stack.

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App analytics and data suite App Annie has announced the availability of App Annie Pulse, a mobile app which provides rapid access to app market trends and competitive insights. 

Powered by AI, the app features a customizable App Annie Performance score, a composite metric based on a series of parameters which help businesses benchmark app performance. The parameters can include sentiment, acquisition, monetization, and engagement metrics, and can be configured according to preference.

Why we care. The volume of business conducted on mobile devices, and especially in app, is only going to grow. It seems appropriate to have real-time metrics on app performance delivered via an app.

A great discussion started by Dave Gerhardt, currently CMO at Privy, and well-known for his years as VP Marketing at Drift. B2C and B2B are both about selling to people; the only real difference is that B2B is about selling to people who work at a company. Shama Hyder of ZenMedia disagreed, identifying a big difference: “In a B2C transaction, the consumer is trying to avoid regret. In a B2B transaction, the buyer is trying to avoid blame.”

Growth strategist Jeff Davis added: “B2B = Selling to people that have to reach a consensus with other people. [This] captures the importance of not only selling to the immediate stakeholder but giving them the language to sell appropriately inside the organization when you are not present in the conversation.” 

To which Mark Stouse of Proof Analytics responded: “That’s the entire premise behind the best ABM programs — helping build consensus in the customer team by helping them move beyond their own self-interest so they can see how the purchase of X not only helps them but everyone else too. The problem is that too many ABM programs message to personas in ways that reinforce their self-interest, even unknowingly.”

The conversation is taking place here.

Join us at SMX Report, February 23, for a guided journey through critical search analytics issues that will help you address reporting needs, mitigate data loss, and make data-driven decisions that yield amazing results.

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“We listen too much to people who claim to have answers and not enough to those who ask good questions.” Jarrett Walker, public transit consultant.