IBM wants cross-channel data to be 'universal'
IBM has launched its Universal Behaviour Exchange (UBX), designed to speed up the transfer of data and insights between channels such as email, social and programmatic display. IBM has 15 marketing and ad tech launch partners who are connected to UBX, it hopes to take this number to 125 partners by 2016. Speaking about its launch, Head of Development for UBX, Kevin Dunn said, "when you view a display ad, it’s very likely the audience is susceptible to other messaging, be it email or Facebook, and we want all of these to inform each other.” 

New data exchange lays the groundwork for a unified cross-channel view of the customer

IBM has introduced its Universal Behaviour Exchange (UBX), a substantial new piece of digital marketing infrastructure that’s designed to speed up the transfer of data and insights between channels such as email, social and programmatic display.

Although marketing tech firms like Salesforce and Adobe have long-standing APIs and certified partner programs to ease the transfer of data and instructions between their platforms, IBM took the extra step of making an exchange that could transfer behavioural profiles from any partner to any other.

The system is intended to be user-friendly enough that marketers can manage their own partner integrations rather than having to rely on IT to connect the pipes, a process that can take weeks (or, if the marketing team is using 30 different platforms, a whole lot longer).

IBM has announced 15 marketing and ad tech launch partners are connected to UBX, and it says it hopes to get that number up to 125 partners by the end of 2016. Current partners span CRM (SugarCRM), mobile (Vibes), programmatic (MediaMath, Turn, Rocket Fuel), social login management (Gigya, Spredfast), attribution analytics (Cake) and social listening (MutualMind). UBX enables each of those platforms to communicate bidirectionally with one another by matching the customer IDs that they each use, as well as with IBM Marketing Cloud tools like Silverpop marketing automation and Coremetrics analytics.

In an interview with AdExchanger, head of development for UBX Kevin Dunn said that a big incentive for building the platform was to close the loop on cross-channel measurement.

“More customers want to know what channels and media types influenced a conversion – not just top-of-the-funnel brand awareness… When you view a display ad, it’s very likely the audience is susceptible to other messaging, be it email or Facebook, and we want all of these to inform each other,” he said.