IBM is pushing deeper into the cloud and paid media. Big Blue on Thursday launched the IBM Universal Behavior Exchange (UBX), a platform that unifies marketing tech acquisitions including Unica campaign management, Silverpop marketing automation, Coremetrics analytics and Xtify mobile personalization. It also named 25 UBX partners, including a handful of ad tech players like […]
Merkle, which bills itself as one of the industry’s largest privately held agencies, is moving beyond database services into tech territory. The company on Monday launched MerkleOne, its version of a people-based marketing platform for advertisers and publishers, including inaugural sell-side partner News Corp. “M1 will enable advertisers to bring their own data, anonymize IDs […]
Oracle’s aggressive stance on acquisition is evident when you consider its Marketing Cloud shopping spree, and it’s not backing down. It recently added web personalization platform Maxymiser to a long list of purchases that included data-management platform BlueKai, campaign-management tool Responsys and Datalogix. The intent is to round out a complete stack that covers all […]
Adobe has combined more components of its Creative and Marketing clouds. Its launch Thursday of Analysis Workspace for Adobe Analytics, a Marketing Cloud visualization tool, uses creative elements inspired by products like Photoshop. The self-serve tool is designed to be a slicker way to query reports than relying on a spreadsheet. It presents a customizable […]
The marketing clouds were heavy with ad tech this week. On Wednesday, Adobe uncorked its self-serve programmatic platform. On Thursday, MediaMath and Oracle hooked up. And of course, Salesforce is concluding its annual Dreamforce blowout, where Scott McCorkle, CEO of its Marketing Cloud, laid out to AdExchanger how the CRM giant thinks about ad tech. […]
Ad tech company MediaMath has integrated with Oracle Marketing Cloud’s email marketing systems, specifically Oracle’s B2B solution Eloqua and the B2C solution Responsys, the companies revealed Thursday. The ad tech integration is the first of its kind for Oracle, said Alex Hooshmand, Oracle’s VP of product. Typically, clients log into the Oracle data-management platform (formerly […]
Adobe’s initial move to upgrade its demand-side platform (DSP), Adobe Media Optimizer, culminated Wednesday in the launch of its new programmatic self-serve platform. The first wave of integrations to Adobe Marketing Cloud applications include data-management platform Adobe AudienceManager, Adobe Analytics and personalization tool Adobe Target. Buyers who use Adobe’s DSP can source search, social and […]
Demandbase has acquired Seattle-based WhoToo, a behavioral data platform focused on B2B marketing, for an unidentified sum, the company disclosed Thursday. Underscoring the deal was Demandbase’s desire to beef up its behavioral marketing data set and hook into clients’ existing data-management platforms. “This isn’t just data for data’s sake,” noted Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase: […]
“Closed.” The word is often bandied about to describe Facebook’s ad tech business. It has become a rallying cry for smaller competitors as well as independent observers concerned about what they see as a return to AOL-style walled gardens. It would seem the naysayers have struck a nerve. Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of advertising technology, […]
David Karnstedt, who headed performance-marketing engine Efficient Frontier during its $400 million sale to Adobe in 2011, is taking the reins yet again as CEO of a data startup called Quantifind. He will lead a 60-person team seeking to scale quickly. Quantifind, which has raised $12 million, is among a handful of startups that act […]
Zeta Interactive closed a $125 million round of debt and equity funding on Wednesday from GSO Capital Partners, the credit division of Blackstone. Zeta Interactive, which changed its name from XL Marketing in 2014, is a marketing technology company whose clients include ADT, National Geographic, Time Inc., T-Mobile, US Airways, ConEdison and Century 21. According […]
The data and mar-tech deals march on. Midmarket private equity firm HGGC, which groomed hybris into a $1 billion-plus acquisition target for SAP, is the latest. The firm revealed Friday it has invested an undisclosed amount in European marketing-automation and data-management solution Selligent. Investment bank The Jordan Edmiston Group advised Selligent on the transaction. As […]
Jayne Pimentel is high on marijuana marketing – in particular using ad tech to support a budding industry. Pimentel, currently Reddit’s ad ops chief and formerly demand-side platform Turn’s director of emerging media, is also founder of CanX – an app designed to connect cannabis growers, product producers, dispensaries and consumers. It uses anonymous registration […]
Salesforce.com wants marketers to know its paid media pitch extends well beyond the confines of social media now. On Wednesday, it revealed buyers can now activate CRM data for ad buys across mobile web, video, display and apps through a wave of new Active Audiences API partners: LiveRamp, LiveIntent, Neustar, Krux and Viant. Although Salesforce.com […]
The digital marketing technologist isn’t exactly a new kid on the block in the enterprise, given Gartner’s prediction – in 2012 – that 70% of companies employed one. But the job title has definitely evolved as many of the technologies that fuel brands’ consumer interactions – from data-management platforms to CRM to commerce systems – […]
Rakuten Marketing is gunning to be a full-funnel ad stack. Acquisition has been front and center in the Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten’s strategy, with investments in search, affiliate, display, mobile and attribution on the marketing services side. But there are different integration requirements since some of Rakuten’s acquired assets are consumer-facing while others are not. “It’s complex […]
Plenti, the new American Express-operated loyalty coalition, seeks to streamline the rewards program. The premise is that consumers can gather loyalty points for up to two years from a variety of partner brands, including ExxonMobil, Hulu, Macy’s, Rite Aid, Direct Energy, Nationwide, AT&T and Amex, and can redeem those points across participating Plenti merchants. “The […]
IBM has big digital marketing dreams. Last spring, those dreams warranted a $100 million commitment to future marketing investments. Wednesday saw the latest development, when IBM hooked its own marketing solutions into various Facebook ad products including the CRM matching program Custom Audiences to enable things like lookalike modeling. IBM also is expanding its Digital […]
A planner could sift through the thousands of private marketplace packages available on media platforms to help a client buy placements for a Mother’s Day sale. Or she could open up Kantar Media’s email on Mother’s Day and find a curated list of packages, including pricing information. Presto! Insta-plan. WPP-owned Kantar Media officially launched its […]
Though less known than some of the other big marketing cloud companies, NetSuite took one more step to ramp up its commerce marketing platform by dropping $200 million on marketing automation platform Bronto, the company revealed Thursday. The Bronto acquisition is the latest instance of marketing automation consolidation. It follows IBM’s roughly $300 million purchase of Silverpop last […]
Merkle|RKG’s Digital Marketing Report, released this week, notes strong disparities between the display ad effectiveness and cost of rivals Google and Facebook. In short, Facebook drives conversion rates, but Google is among the cheapest on a CPC basis. Though Google click growth dipped to 0.2% YoY, the Google Display Network (GDN) pulled 11% of all […]
To grow its base of 350 enterprise clients, social media management tool Tracx is growing – and is planning for more. In February, it raised $18 million in Series C, and Tuesday, it unveiled the hiring of former Experian Marketing Services VP Amy Inlow as CMO. CEO Eran Gilad said Tracx’s first 350 clients rolled […]
Marketing automation, long defined as a B2B lead-gen system, is making its way into B2C territory. One of the most common complaints about standard marketing automation systems is that they’re simply too old or unable to sync data in real-time. But Salesforce.com’s Pardot and Marketo are all updating to compete effectively in a cross-channel media environment. […]
Most targeting data addresses consumer marketing needs. Finding people who want to buy welding machinery or business software in a market full of data segments about new moms or golfers is tough. It’s a void that B2B marketing company MultiView intends to fill through its expertise serving B2B advertisers. Because many of its clients don’t […]
For CPG companies like ConAgra, buying media using sales data from retailers like Walmart offers a way to finally close the loop between media spend and sales. But some are concerned about the lack of transparency that comes with using the Walmart Exchange. “Walmart has more data than we do,” said Fernando Arriola, VP of […]
More marketing platforms are getting into middleware – acting as a translation layer between a server and applications. One example is Acxiom, which tries to position itself as a neutral connector between online and offline data sources. Another one is Beckon, which recently raised $13 million in Series B funding led by Venrock to act […]
Measurement mogul Nielsen is bullish on its evolving digital measurement capabilities – but panels aren’t going anywhere, said CEO Mitch Barns. “The future of measurement is not about choosing between panels and big data,” Barns told investors on an earnings call Thursday. “It’s about combining high-quality panels with granular data sets for the best of both […]
Has real estate advertising reached a digital saturation point? Borrell Associates, a research firm focusing on local advertising, says it has – at least for the agent and broker community. Digital ad spend among agents and brokers is projected to decline 2% – a $200 million drop – in 2015, according to a report the […]
While SAP has been generally absent from the marketing cloud conversation (save for last year’s announcement it would resell Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions), the company on Tuesday rolled out of a contextual marketing platform dubbed the SAP hybris Marketing Solution. “SAP hasn’t traditionally been known in the marketing space, but we are rapidly building out […]
Pitney Bowes, a 90-year-old company commonly thought of as a manufacturer of postage meters, is quietly sitting on an $838 million digital commerce business. Like its competitors, Pitney Bowes’ marketing services is the sum of many acquired parts. Its many acquisitions include: MapInfo, a mapping and location intelligence platform acquired in 2007; Portrait Software, customer […]
