Released: October - December 2025We’re excited to share two powerful capabilities that enhance data governance and unlock advanced activation use cases in the Zeotap CDP. These releases reflect our commitment to enterprise-grade compliance controls and sophisticated data modeling flexibility.
Channel and Destination Restrictions for Catalogue Attributes
Release Type: Generally AvailableRelease Date: Q4 2025Availability: Enterprise Plans
Overview
Control precisely where your catalogue attributes can be activated with granular channel and destination restrictions. CDP Admins can now define authorization rules at the attribute level, ensuring sensitive data reaches only approved channels and destinations.The Challenge
Enterprise organizations face increasing pressure to protect customer data while enabling sophisticated marketing activation. Without attribute-level controls, teams risk exposing sensitive identifiers—like loyalty IDs, purchase history, or personally identifiable information—to unauthorized channels. Manual governance processes don’t scale, creating compliance risk and slowing down campaign execution.Data governance teams needed a systematic way to enforce “data use boundaries” directly within the CDP, preventing unauthorized activations before they happen rather than detecting violations after the fact.What’s New
Attribute-Level Channel Assignment- Define authorized channels and destinations during catalogue attribute creation in Advanced Settings
- Apply restrictions at the channel level (e.g., block all Paid Media destinations) or select specific destinations within a channel
- Group-level restrictions for ID attributes automatically safeguard all identifiers within the same ID group, ensuring consistent governance
- Default-open model: All channels and destinations have access unless explicitly restricted, maintaining workflow flexibility
- New “Restricted Channels” column in the catalogue listing page displays restriction status with channel icons
- Filterable and exportable restrictions appear in catalogue downloads for audit and reporting
- Hover tooltips provide instant visibility into which channels are blocked for each attribute
- Proactive prevention: Unauthorized destinations are automatically grayed out during audience creation when restricted attributes are selected
- Clear error messaging guides users to remove restricted destinations or attributes before saving
- Destination mapping safeguards prevent unauthorized attributes from being sent in field mappings with inline validation
- Existing audiences continue running with their saved configurations, even if attributes are restricted post-creation
- Edit-time enforcement: Restrictions only apply when users modify existing audiences, with clear prompts to adjust configuration
Key Benefits
Enhanced Data Security & Compliance- Prevent unauthorized data exposure with systematic enforcement at the platform level
- Maintain audit trails of which attributes can activate through which channels
- Reduce compliance risk by embedding data use restrictions directly into workflows
- Centrally manage data use policies without relying on manual reviews or post-activation audits
- Apply restrictions once; enforcement happens automatically across all audience workflows
- Protect entire ID groups with a single configuration change
- Users receive immediate, actionable feedback during audience creation—no wasted work
- Existing campaigns remain unaffected, avoiding disruption to running activations
- Admin-controlled restrictions maintain flexibility for authorized use cases
How It Works
When a CDP Admin restricts an attribute to specific channels (e.g., “Payback ID cannot activate to Paid Media”), the platform enforces this rule across three touchpoints:- Audience destination selection: Restricted destinations appear grayed out with hover explanations
- Destination mapping: Restricted attributes cannot be selected in field mapping configurations
- Audience editing: Users are prompted to remove conflicts before saving changes
Getting Started
Availability: This feature is available for all Zeotap Enterprise customers.Access Requirements: Only users with CDP Admin role can create or modify channel restrictions. All users can view restriction status in the catalogue.Complex NCE Join Support
Release Type: BetaRelease Date: Q4 2025Availability: Enterprise Plans (Early Access)
Overview
Unlock sophisticated data modeling capabilities by joining Non-Customer Event (NCE) sources with nested object and list properties in your customer profiles. This release enables activation of enriched product, transaction, and behavioral data through audiences, journeys, and destination mappings.The Challenge
Modern customer data models rely heavily on complex, nested structures—think arrays of purchase transactions, lists of product interactions, or hierarchical account relationships. Previously, NCE joins were limited to top-level attributes, preventing teams from enriching nested data structures with external sources like product catalogs, inventory systems, or real-time recommendation engines.Marketing and analytics teams needed to build audiences based on enriched nested data (e.g., “customers who purchased products with inventory status = ‘low stock’”) and activate those enriched attributes downstream. Without native support for complex joins, teams resorted to flattening data models or building workarounds in external systems—adding latency, complexity, and maintenance burden.What’s New
Comprehensive Join Support for Complex Data Types- Join NCE sources to object properties (both primitive and list properties within objects)
- Join NCE sources to list-of-object properties (both primitive and list properties within arrays)
- Four join patterns supported: Object → Primitive, Object → List, List-of-Object → Primitive, List-of-Object → List
- Composite key functionality works seamlessly across all join patterns for multi-field matching
- Customer 360 visibility: Enriched NCE attributes appear within nested object/list structures for complete profile inspection
- Audience builder support: Select joined NCE attributes in audience filter criteria with automatically generated UI queries
- Journey orchestration: Use enriched complex data as entry criteria and decisioning logic in journey flows
- Destination mapping: Send joined NCE attributes to downstream systems using dot notation (e.g.,
account.product_catalog.stock_status)
- Filter nested objects by enriched attributes: Apply NCE-based filters when sending objects/lists to destinations
- Automatic ANY condition logic: Only objects that meet the NCE filter criteria are sent to destinations
- Simplified UX: No ANY/ALL operator selection required—the platform applies sensible defaults
Key Benefits
Flexible Data Modeling Without Compromise- Preserve rich, nested data structures without flattening for join compatibility
- Model customer data the way your business operates—hierarchies, arrays, and relationships intact
- Join external data sources at any level of nesting for maximum flexibility
- Build audiences on enriched nested attributes (e.g., “users with orders containing products in promotion category X”)
- Combine profile, behavioral, and enriched product/inventory data in a single audience definition
- Activate nuanced segments that reflect real business logic and complex customer journeys
- Send only the enriched, filtered subset of nested data to each destination
- Use dot notation for clear, readable attribute mapping in destination configurations
- Reduce data processing and transformation logic in downstream systems
- All existing NCE deletion functionality continues to work as expected
- Composite key support ensures complex matching logic scales across join types
- Backward-compatible implementation preserves existing NCE join configurations
How It Works
When you configure an NCE source (e.g., Product Catalog) to join with a nested property (e.g.,purchase_history[].product_id), Zeotap enriches each item in the array with attributes from the NCE source.Example workflow:- Define the join: Map NCE source
product_catalog.skutopurchase_history[].product_sku - Enrichment happens automatically: Each purchase in the array gains access to product catalog attributes (category, brand, inventory status)
- Build audiences: Filter on
purchase_history[] where product_catalog.category = 'Electronics' - Activate with precision: Send only qualifying purchase objects to destinations, using enriched attributes in field mappings
parent_object.nce_source.attribute) provides clarity in UI and ensures users understand the data lineage.Getting Started
Availability: This feature is currently in Beta and available to select Enterprise customers through our Early Access Program.How to Join: Contact your Zeotap Customer Success Manager to request Beta access.Known Limitations:- Beta phase supports up to 3 levels of nesting depth
- Performance optimization for large array joins is ongoing