CDP Institute

Nearly half (49%) of marketers sell ads in their emails, according to this Digiday survey from messaging platform Jeeng.  Behavior-based email personalization is now used by 67% of marketers, up from 60% in 2021.  That makes it more common than name-based personalization, which fell from 78% to 66% usage.

You may not be used to ads in your emails, but ads on social networks now seem entirely normal. So it makes sense that OpenWeb, which helps publishers build private social communities, just to bought ADYOULIKE, which lets publishers sell ads on those networks. Price was reported at $100 million.

Observe.AI, which offers AI-powered insights into contact center interactions, has raised a $125 million Series C, bringing total funding to $214 million.  Observe.AI uses speech analysis to understand conversations, recommend responses to call center agents, and execute intelligent workflows.

This was going to be a story about Omnicom Media Group’s new programmatic private marketplace for out-of-home display screens, which illustrates trends including programmatic,  out-of-home ads, and private marketplaces. But OMG trumped itself with an alliance with Firework to embed shoppable livestream video in brand web sites. That checks the trend boxes for social commerce, video ads, agencies offering adtech, and bypassing conventional ad channels.

Neighborhood social media network Nextdoor offers its own alternative to the usual ad channels.  They just added a self-serve ad campaign management tool to make it even easier for small and mid-size businesses to advertise without relying on agencies or other specialists.  Self-service and bringing agency functions in-house are two more trends we track.

Email data and marketing tools vendor Validity has purchased MailCharts, which reports on marketing activity by competitors.  The trends here include vendors expanding their product scope and acquisitions.  Price wasn’t reported, so we don’t know whether the deal also illustrates buyers paying crazy-high prices or a dampening of the market.  But it’s a trend either way.