Article by Apoorv Durga, VP Research & Advisory, Real Story Group. Published August 6, 2025.
Core thesis: CDP vendors claim "real-time" but most implementations exhibit "batch in the middle" — ingestion may be real-time, but enrichment, segmentation, and identity stitching run on scheduled cycles. Coins the term "real-time-ish" for this phenomenon.
Documented batch cadences:
- Enrichment: "on a schedule" (interval not specified in article; vendor-dependent)
- Segments: "overnight" or "hourly" depending on vendor
- Identity stitching: "may run hourly"
- Practical result: Even when events arrive in real-time, audience membership refreshes run daily or weekly for most deployments
Recommended SLA: Sub-500ms end-to-end is achievable only for specific high-value, pre-computed events. General audience segment refreshes should not be expected at sub-second cadences in typical CDP deployments.
Limitation for TC-135: Article establishes the general batch-vs-real-time distinction for CDP activation but does not provide per-channel latency tier mapping (e.g., "email = daily batch," "SMS = weekly," "POS = inter-day"). Per-channel specificity remains undocumented in publicly accessible independent sources.
KG relevance: Supports latency-tier conceptual nodes and concept.real-time-decisioning body — particularly the important caveat that "intra-session" and "intra-day" latency tiers require architectural choices (pre-computation, edge caching) beyond default CDP segment refresh cycles. Also relevant to operational-task nodes that document segment publish cadences.