What is a DMP vs a CDP?

With so many acronyms in adtech, it can be hard to keep track of them all! Two more that have been added to the stack in recent years are DMP and CDP.

DMP stands for Data Management Platform, which is a system in which you can collect, store, manage, and activate 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data. CDP stands for Customer Database Platform, which is a system that aggregates and organizes customer data for use by other systems.

Is it just me or do those sound an awful lot alike?

Well, they are… and they’re not! In terms of collecting and storing data, it’s true that DMPs and CDPs are fairly similar. However it’s in the management and activation of data where the two platforms really start to show their different purposes.

In general, a CDP is meant to be a multipurpose database offering various systems a centralized customer profile they can use to power efforts all the way from consent management to marketing campaigns. Inherently a CDP is about identifying and managing individual profiles; meanwhile a DMP is meant to create cohorts of audience groupings from anonymized profiles.

As well, while a CDP is usually the identity resolution brain of a company’s techstack body, a DMP is specialized for advertising and marketing purposes, which is why a DMP will also be able to offer 3rd party data availability (something outside the scope for most CDPs), segment lookalike functionality, and typically the DMP activation partners are all advertising/marketing related platforms.

While it might seem like overkill for a company to have both a CDP and a DMP, as at first glance the systems seem duplicative, when you look at the different functions of the two platforms it becomes apparent why companies are increasingly moving to a hybrid model of leveraging both for an ideal adtech/martech stack.