Marketing leaders surveyed in Gartner’s 2017-2018 CMO Survey invested two-thirds of their budget in supporting customer retention and growth. With so many customers oscillating between phones, tablets, game consoles, desktops and laptops, many marketers are desperate for a unified view of the customer. They seek an effective way to efficiently collect, manage and use their first-party customer data. Yet like unicorns and yetis, the illusive unified single view of the customer is easier found in dreams than in reality. The technology systems identifying as customer data platforms (CDPs) have yet to settle on standard capabilities.