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To clarify fergs' answer, it looks like you've done

#include <pcl/point_cloud.h>
#include <pcl/point_types.h>

but not

#include <pcl_ros/point_cloud.h>

The pcl/XXX headers define pcl::PointCloud and pcl::PointXYZ types used by PCL. However, PCL is a stand-alone library that knows nothing about ROS. If you include only those headers, ROS doesn't know what to do with pcl::PointCloud, because it's not a native ROS message type. Thus the ROS serialization code barfs.

pcl_ros/point_cloud.h contains the glue code that tells ROS how to serialize/deserialize pcl::PointCloud. This code serializes pcl::PointCloud into exactly the same over-the-wire format as the ROS-native sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 message type, which is why you can use them interchangeably in your subscriber code.

If you exactly cut-and-paste the subscribing example, does it work?