A customer data platform (CDP) is a data warehouse that collects and stores customer information. CDP solutions can be used to track the activity of customers across multiple channels, including email, website clicks, phone calls, and in-store purchases. Many businesses use CDPs because they allow companies to generate reports and analyze consumer behavior at scale.
Website Cookies
A cookie is a small chunk of text that websites store on your computer or mobile device. They can be used to track your activity online, such as the pages you’ve visited and the items in your shopping cart. Cookies allow websites to remember information about you, such as whether or not you’ve seen an ad before, so that they don’t show it to you again. You’ll also find cookies on sites like Facebook and Twitter because they have their own business models built around collecting data about users—as opposed to collecting money from advertisements like most mainstream media sites do.
The difference between 1st party cookies and 3rd party cookies is simple: when someone visits your website(a 1st party), a tracking code is set on their browser so that you can know what kind of content they’re interested in seeing (i.e., sports). When someone visits another site like Amazon (a 3rd party), their purchase history gets collected by an advertising platform without needing any further involvement. This information could then appear alongside ads for products similar to those purchased previously by that user’s wife.
Web Browsing Behavior
Web browsing behavior is a critical part of any CDP. It’s common to record elements such as the following:
- Browsing history, which includes the specific websites that have been accessed and when they were accessed.
- Search history, which includes what was searched on and when it was searched for. (Note: This information can be anonymized.)
- Content viewed on each website or app, including whether it was watched or read. This is useful for understanding how customers interact with content in addition to where they might be encountering issues with viewing content due to poor performance or bugs in the design of the interface.
Social Media Profiles
As per the Adobe Real-Time CDP’s experts, “Social media profiles are a rich source of information about people and can be used to create a profile of a person that is similar to a credit report.” Personal information found on social media profiles includes:
- Name and surname
- Birth date
- Phone number(s)
- Address(es)
Advertising Behavior (Interests)
The company you work for will track what you click on and what you don’t. This information is used to target ads to you, which also means it’s sold to advertisers. Additionally, these companies are building a profile of you so that they can sell third-party services like credit card companies or financial institutions.
Personal Information
Personal information is the data you fill out on a form when you sign up for a service or purchase something online. It includes:
- Full name
- Address
- Email address
- Phone number
- Birth date and gender (if applicable)
Not just that, but it can also include other elements of your life. For example, if you’re signing up for a gym membership, they may ask what year you graduated high school or college—and those details might be stored alongside your credit card information and payment history in their database.
This is just a brief overview of the data that can be collected by a customer data platform. If you are interested in learning more, please contact a customer data platform provider.
