What happened to Krux

A campaign brief says to load the segments back into Krux before the flight goes out, and the room has already agreed the next line fixes the name. That next line says Audience Studio, as if one of the names were still a place you can reach. The agreement is easy: tidy slides, a load, a flight. The agreement is the problem. Krux became that DMP. The DMP's end of life has passed. Loading toward it does not become responsible because the slides are tidy.

The distinction that matters is between a rename that already happened and a destination the notice never gave. Krux was acquired in 2016 and became Salesforce Audience Studio, the DMP. End of life was 1 February 2024. The distributions were turned off. There is no DMP left to integrate, trial, or staff. No new home is named. Choosing where audiences go next is a different decision. It is not a load into the name on the brief.

What follows are the questions that stop a final load being treated as housekeeping. Each has a good answer and a bad answer. The difference is whether the answer names 2016, Audience Studio, 1 February 2024, or a file you already hold. A general answer is how end of life becomes a refresh project.

A DVD, a Reddit thread, a YouTube clip, a TikTok, a course, a book, or a certification is not a source for the date, the price, or a shutdown.

#The five, and what a bad answer signals

#1. What happened to Krux?

The question is not which of the two words looks more current. It is what was bought, what it was renamed, and when that DMP ended.

Yes. Krux was acquired in 2016. It became Salesforce Audience Studio, the DMP. The announcement cited here gives the end, and the sentence is quoted once: "Salesforce has officially announced that the End of Life date for Salesforce Audience Studio DMP (formerly known as Krux) is February 1, 2024."

Formerly known as Krux means the DMP people mean when they say Krux is Audience Studio. You do not have a second, older Krux that survived beside it. A quote that offers to migrate Krux into Audience Studio is offering to migrate a product into itself, and into a self that has reached end of life.

The acquisition, as the record can tell it, is the 2016 purchase, the rename to Audience Studio, and the end of life on 1 February 2024. It is not news of a destination that replaced the DMP. The quoted sentence does not name one. People keep both words because contracts aged on Krux and later paper said Audience Studio. Two words are not two systems. They are the path of one DMP.

A list of acquisitions will include Krux. The list is not a grace period, and it is not a new home for segments. Other names on that list still have products you can open. This DMP does not. Do not read a neighbouring product as the place the notice sent the audiences. The notice dated an end. It did not name a destination. A shorter telling does not earn a landing zone, a trial, or a price.

A good answer sounds like the brief owner saying Krux was acquired in 2016, became Salesforce Audience Studio, the DMP, and reached end of life on 1 February 2024, with both words treated as one product and with no second Krux beside it.

A bad answer sounds like we will migrate Krux into Audience Studio before the flight, because the slides use both names. That is a migration of a product into itself, and into a DMP that has already ended. The two words are the path of one system.

#2. Which dates can you defend?

Krux was acquired in 2016. End of life was 1 February 2024. Those are the dates. A month is not added to 2016. The end-of-life date is the precise one, and the announcement's own date format stays inside the quotation. When you write to your team, say 1 February 2024.

Searches for an acquisition date, an announcement, and a timeline get both marks. Bought in 2016. End of life on 1 February 2024. A timeline that stops at the purchase still has a living DMP on it. That picture is false now. A timeline that offers a grace period, a read-only season, or a final export window is adding time the sentence does not give. If a contract has a clause, the people who hold the contract read it. A campaign date is not a reason to invent the clause.

The distributions were turned off. That is part of what end of life means here. Do not describe a distribution that still leaves the DMP. There is no DMP left to send it.

A good answer sounds like the campaign lead writing 2016 and 1 February 2024, stating that distributions were turned off, and refusing a read-only season because the flight is close.

A bad answer sounds like acquired sometime in 2016, and we still have a window to send a file because the flight date is the real deadline. The purchase year has no month in the record used here. The end-of-life date does not grow a window. A flight is not a clause in the announcement.

#3. Who owns it now?

It was Salesforce's, as Audience Studio, the DMP that had been Krux. There is no DMP left to integrate, trial, or staff. Ownership of the old company is not a segment builder you can still be granted.

Who owns an export you saved before the end is your organisation. What you may do with that file is not decided by the end-of-life sentence. Who owns a current Krux or Audience Studio subscription is not a vendor relationship the record recognises. The product reached end of life.

Do not say the audiences now live in a product that has not been named. The notice does not name a new home. A link elsewhere is not that notice. If a deck names a landing place, ask which sentence announced it. The sentence quoted here announces an end-of-life date. It does not announce a destination.

Salesforce owns the history of the 2016 purchase. It does not, on this record, run a DMP you can still load. A pixel that still fires is a tag on a site you control, to be tested. It is not proof the DMP is staffed.

A good answer sounds like the person who holds a pre-end export saying the file belongs to the organisation, and the tag owner reporting a pixel as firing, not firing, or unknown, without treating a firing pixel as a staffed DMP.

A bad answer sounds like the audiences now live in the neighbouring product on the acquisition list, and the pixel proves someone is still staffing Krux. The notice did not name that neighbour. A tag on a site you control is a test. Unknown is not a reason to send data anywhere.

#4. What was paid?

The record cited here does not publish a purchase price. There is no current licence. How much Salesforce paid in 2016 is not on that record. A cost per profile, or a share of media spend, is the sort of number DMP conversations used to carry. It is not available here, and it is not a reason to revive the product so an old calculator has an input.

A search for the acquisition price ends on the silence. A search for a licence ends on the end of life. There is nothing current to buy under Krux or Audience Studio. A different audience decision, made later, does not inherit a fee from this history.

Why Salesforce acquired Krux, and why Krux sold, are not in the end-of-life sentence. The sentence dates the end of the DMP formerly known as Krux. It does not give a motive for the 2016 purchase. A motive added for the brief cannot be checked against the announcement.

Impact on customers is that the DMP ended and the distributions were turned off. There is nothing left to integrate, trial, or staff. Customers are told not to build a migration into Audience Studio. They are not told where segments must go instead. That refusal is the impact. Naming a home would be a claim the notice does not make.

A good answer sounds like procurement stating that the announcement prints no 2016 price and no current licence, and refusing to revive a cost per profile or a share of media spend as an input to a load.

A bad answer sounds like the old media-share figure is enough to justify one more sync, and we will inherit that fee onto whatever home we pick. Those calculator inputs are not in the record. There is nothing current to buy, and a later decision does not inherit a fee from a DMP that ended.

#5. Is the DMP shut down, and are distributions off?

Yes. End of life was 1 February 2024. The distributions were turned off. There is no DMP left. Shutdown and sunset searches get that date, not a refresh project.

Do not build a migration into Audience Studio. Do not build one into Krux. A final load, a staging step, and a last sync are the same forbidden project. Staging is still a migration into the thing that is off.

A season after 1 February 2024 in which the DMP could still accept a file is not added. The date is the end. A brief written now is after that end. A plan that says "before we switch" does not apply to a switch the notice already marked.

An export pulled earlier, if you can find it and date it, is a file. It must not be described as a connection you will reopen. If the columns only make sense to someone who has left, write that down. An unexplained file is not a segment strategy. If someone asks whether customers were forced onto a named replacement, the notice does not name one, so the answer is not yes. A score for decline is not invented. The customer fact is that the DMP is gone.

A taxonomy workshop aimed at Audience Studio is a workshop for a switched-off system. Cancel it. The date does not move because a campaign is close.

A good answer sounds like the campaign owner striking the load, writing 1 February 2024 and distributions off, and listing any earlier export as a dated file rather than as a connection to reopen.

A bad answer sounds like one last sync, staged, before we switch, and a workshop to tidy the taxonomy inside Audience Studio. The switch the notice marked has already passed. Staging is still a migration. A workshop does not move the date.

#What to do with the answers

Read the five as a set. Specific answers take the load off the brief. General answers mean the room has agreed that a tidy name is a place you can still reach, which the announcement does not say.

Find the order form that says Krux or Audience Studio, and the invoices after 1 February 2024, including a zero if the charge stopped. Zero should be seen, not assumed. List exports with dates. Walk the tags that still say the old names and write firing, not firing, or unknown. Four lines answer the searches. Acquired in 2016. Became Audience Studio, the DMP. End of life 1 February 2024, distributions off. No price, no current licence, no new home named. They do not activate an audience. Activation into the dead DMP is the project to refuse. Keep both old names on the folder so the next search finds the date before it finds a vendor. If the campaign brief still says Krux, strike the load and write the date. Run the campaign without pretending the DMP is back, or move the audience decision into the open under its own name. A board can carry four lines. Bought in 2016. Became Audience Studio. Ended 1 February 2024. Distributions off, and no new home named.

Do not build a migration into Audience Studio. The distributions were turned off. The inventory of paper, files, and tags is on the Krux implementation page.