Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) mainly work on first party data. Recall that first party data is data of your customers collected directly by you. Your customers’ transaction data or their data in your CRM are examples of first party data.
For a more complete profile, you often enrich this first party data with 2nd and 3rd party data. You need to source this from data providers. Or you can use mechanisms such as Data Management Platform (DMPs) or cookie-based information for enrichment. A CDP would then do identity stitching from data from all these sources.
Some CDPs are now partnering with such providers to get customers’ third party data. They combine it with their own first party data to create unified profiles. CDP vendor Amperity announced their partnership with Infutor. Quaero is also doing something similar with neustar.
The promise is that these providers have verified and high quality data about consumers. I suspect other CDP vendors would also be evaluating similar options.
This will become an important aspect as third-party cookies are phased out. In fact, usage of third-party cookies is on the decline. So how you get access to verified/reasonably good third-party data about your customers is going to be important when you evaluate CDPs.