CDP Capability: Own vs. Rent
This table separates strategic assets from infrastructure. Identity graph, survivorship logic, and consent state are strategic assets. We own those. Activation, orchestration, and UI tooling are infrastructure. We rent those and stay switchable.
The distinction matters because conflating the two leads to renting back our own crown jewels years from now. This table sets that line before vendor conversations begin.
| Capability | Own/Rent | Why | Build Options (if Own) | Vendor Options (if Rent) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identity graph & resolution logic | Own | Compounding strategic asset; core IP | BigQuery tables + dbt models for nodes/edges | Matching signal only: LiveRamp |
| Survivorship rules / golden record engine | Own | Encodes business logic, not a product feature | dbt models with versioned rule logic | — |
| Consent/preference state | Own | Legal liability + trust asset | BigQuery table as state of record | Collection UI only: OneTrust |
| Event schema / semantic layer | Own | Defines business vocabulary | dbt Semantic Layer (native, since already on dbt) | — |
| Historical event data / raw behavioral store | Own | Portability, replay, ML training data | BigQuery native storage | — |
| Real-time identity resolution service | Own (logic) / Rent (infra) | Latency-sensitive but logic must stay yours | Custom service (Cloud Run/GKE) reading resolved graph | Infra: Bigtable |
| Probabilistic/fuzzy matching | Rent | Hard to replicate well in-house | Splink (OSS, Spark-based) if building | LiveRamp |
| Streaming/event ingestion pipes | Rent | Commodity plumbing | Pub/Sub + Dataflow (GCP-native, no vendor needed) | — |
| Reverse ETL / activation orchestration | Rent | Commoditized, low switching cost | Not recommended to build | Hightouch |
| Segment/audience builder UI | Rent | Marketing-facing interface, replaceable | Not recommended to build | Hightouch |
| Ad platform / ESP connectors | Rent | Pure commodity integration | Not recommended to build | Hightouch |
| Consent management UI | Rent | Interface, not the state itself | Not recommended to build | OneTrust |
| Personalization/decisioning engine | Rent (evaluate case-by-case) | Can commoditize; revisit if models become IP | BigQuery ML if models become differentiated IP | Adobe Target (only if already in Adobe stack; otherwise defer) |
| Fraud/risk identity signals | Rent (signals) / Own (decisioning) | Signal sourcing is commodity | Decisioning logic: dbt/BigQuery ML | Socure |
| Data quality monitoring/observability | Rent | Tooling, not strategic | Great Expectations (OSS) if building | Monte Carlo |
| Composable orchestration layer | Rent (thin layer) | Should sit over owned assets, not be one | Not recommended to build | Hightouch |
Glossary
CDP (Customer Data Platform) — Software that collects customer data from many sources and combines it into one profile per person.
Identity graph — A map that links all the different IDs (email, phone, device, account) that belong to the same customer.
Identity resolution — The process of figuring out which records belong to the same person and linking them together.
Deterministic matching — Linking records using exact matches, like the same email address or customer ID.
Probabilistic matching — Linking records using best guesses, like similar browsing patterns or device info, when there's no exact match.
Survivorship rules — Rules that decide which piece of data wins when two systems disagree (example: which address is correct).
Golden record — The single, trusted version of a customer's data after all sources have been combined and conflicts resolved.
Consent management — Tracking what each customer has agreed to, like whether they opted in to marketing emails.
Composable CDP — A CDP built from separate tools on top of your own data warehouse, instead of one all-in-one product.
Packaged CDP — An all-in-one CDP product from a single vendor (example: Segment, Adobe, mParticle).
Reverse ETL — Sending data from your warehouse out to other tools, like ad platforms or email systems.
CDC (Change Data Capture) — A way to track and copy changes from a source system as soon as they happen.
MTU (Monthly Tracked Users) — A pricing model where cost is based on how many unique users are tracked each month.
Data portability — The ability to take your data out of a vendor's system in a usable format if you switch tools.
System of record — The one place considered the official, trusted source for a piece of data.