About five years ago, I was asked to assess whether my company should build a customer data platform (CDP). Market pressure was intense, and clients repeatedly pushed us to integrate with the platforms they were adopting. It was tempting to jump on the bandwagon. But after examining the use cases, the economics and the risks of storing person-level data, the conclusion was no. It wasn’t a popular call, yet it allowed our team to focus on the infrastructure that would truly matter for privacy and operational efficiency. Why did we walk away? A key responsibility of a product owner is to determine whether a problem is expanding or fading. There’s little value in investing to solve an issue that’s already losing relevance. At that point, I was convinced that the fixation on hyper-granular customer attributes wouldn’t withstand the mounting costs and risks for brands. If anything, the market recognized that shift even faster than I expected. Understanding customers is crucial. Hoarding all of their data is not.
The allure of identity
Brands are still purchasing CDPs because they believe identity is a challenge they must tackle on their own. They want the reassurance of feeling all-knowing, but the market simply doesn’t cooperate. Identity is too fragmented. Signals are constantly changing. Platforms manage person-level precision far more effectively than any individual brand ever will. Identity looks like an asset, yet it behaves like a liability. Focusing on ownership is the wrong instinct. Decide which assets are truly critical to own, and let the systems that…