As a long-standing Tealium partner agency, we are delighted to be part of this event every year. This year, I had the pleasure of traveling for zweipunkt to the Tealium Digital Velocity 2026 at the historic location "The Brewery" in London. The central question of the event was highly topical: How do we bring artificial intelligence out of the endless experimentation phase and into real value creation?
Currently, an alarming 87% of all AI initiatives fail before they ever go into production. The reason for this is rarely the AI technology itself, but usually the lack of data. This is exactly where a modern customer data platform comes into play.
In this article, I share my personal highlights from the conference and show why the key to success lies in real-time context, a clean database and local data processing - and what this looks like in practice.
The problem: artificial intelligence without context
Why do so many AI projects fail to achieve their business impact? An apt picture was painted at the conference: AI suffers from a massive "supply chain problem" when it comes to data supply. It lacks the memory, the right tools and, above all, the context for current user interaction.
The result is what is known as "blind CX" - a blind customer experience. A user clicks through an app in frustration, then calls support and has to explain their problem to the chatbot or agent several times. The AI may be theoretically powerful, but without real-time data it is flying blind.
A quote from the stage perfectly summed up this gap:
"The warehouse knows what was yesterday - your customer is acting right now."
Traditional data warehouses are excellent storage solutions, but are often too slow for live interactions. If you want to future-proof your data platform, you need to be able to activate fragmented data in real time. You can find out more about this in our Data Platforms & Architecture section.
The solution: customer data platform as a context engine
To solve this problem, Tealium is implementing a clear paradigm shift: away from passive data and towards "agentic action". The Customer Data Platform (CDP) is becoming the central "context engine" that supplies AI systems, agents and chatbots with reliable data in real time.
The new Tealium Mobile AIDK, which has been announced for the second quarter of 2026, is particularly exciting for our work at zweipunkt. This technology brings AI processing directly to the edge, i.e. to the user's device.
This has several advantages:
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Personalization takes place with a latency of less than one millisecond
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Data remains local → no explicit consent required
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Maximum privacy compliance with high performance at the same time
A use case from the Swiss job platform JobCloud shows what this can look like in practice. They were faced with the question of why users were applying for jobs even though the algorithm had calculated a low "job fit".
With the Tealium Moments API and "Moments iQ", a survey was played out at the exact moment of the click. This zero-party data approach provided a surprisingly simple insight: users didn't fully trust the AI, just wanted to try anyway, or knew their resume didn't reflect their actual skills.
Through this real-time interaction, JobCloud was able to close the gap between the data model and human intention - a crucial step towards better customer experience and personalization.
Conclusion: Customer Data Platform as the key to real AI value creation
Digital Velocity 2026 has clearly shown: The future of the Customer Data Platform lies not only in the collection of data, but in immediate, AI-supported action in real time.
At the same time, it became clear that technology alone is not enough.
As Mary Portas said in her closing keynote:
"Use technology to enhance the human touch - not to replace it."
Therein lies the real challenge: combining data, AI and human understanding in a meaningful way to build trust and loyalty.
Want to find out how to take your data strategy to the next level? Let's discuss how a modern customer data platform can future-proof your architecture and create real added value.
Contact us for a non-binding project discussion at zweipunkt AG.
