CDP Institute

The CDP industry isn’t immune from the general tech slowdown: 38% of firms showed a reduced headcount in the latest CDP Institute Industry Update report. Cuts were concentrated among the largest and fastest growing firms, suggesting an adjustment to lower expectations. It’s not all bad news: funding held up and the industry still grew over-all.

The pandemic was boom time for the online events industry, and few boomed louder than Hubilo. Their Linked-In headcount is down about 7% from the peak but they’re adjusting. Latest move is to buy fielddrive, which helps to manage live events. Price was not announced.

The Walmart vs Amazon horse race is always fun to watch. Latest news is that Walmart reported $2.7 billion in ad sales for last year, an impressive 30% increase but still far behind Amazon’s $37.7 billion.

What kind of idiot would copy the self-destructive business choices that Elon Musk is making at Twitter?  No need to wonder: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced a paid “blue badge” service for Instagram and Facebook accounts in Australia and New Zealand, with plans to roll it out globally.

Customer experience is shifting from a departmental to organization-wide focus, according to this very interesting CMO report for Optimizely.  CEOs now are directly in charge of CX at 28% of organizations, up from 7% the year before, while the number marketing, sales, and dedicated CX leaders in charge has dropped.   Unified data is the highest CX tech priority although CDPs rank far behind AI, campaign management and CRM on the list of planned investments.

Here’s a look at CX priorities from the customer service point of view.  Intercom found that 76% of respondents said their current tech stack holds them back from meeting their goals, with 73% specifically citing improved integration as a priority.  While better training was the top solution to meeting customer expectations (53%), more automation also ranked high on the list (43%).

“Look on the bright side,” sings Stephen Sondheim’s Charles J. Guiteau as he waits to be hanged.  In that spirit, financial advisory firm Ciesco reports that 2022 was a “buoyant year for M&A activity”, with a 20% increase in deal volume, including a 12% rise for martech.  Announced deal value was down by half but we won’t dwell on that.

“Get off your backside, shine those shoes,” counsels the ever-optimistic Guiteau.  Media agency GroupM is taking that advice to heart in the battle against global warming, with an update to its advertising carbon impact calculator.  The new version offers channel-level measurements and uses supply chain emissions data from Scope3.

Guiteau’s “Inside the bad side something’s good” might be the motto at Atlanta-based Terminus Software, which followed a quiet 15% layoff last May with an equally unannounced $24 million funding in January.  Don’t confuse them with Dublin-based TerminusDB, which just announced a new “open-source, headless, and developer-focus content and knowledge management system”.   As Guiteau would say, “I am so glad.”

B2B data and tech company Demandbase announced $175 million in new financing from Vista Credit Partners.  It’s the company’s first raise since 2017 and more than doubles total funding to $318 million.  Demandbase is one of relatively few martech firms to take major new funding this year.

Social shopping continues its decidedly mixed progress.  Instagram is shutting down live shopping, which lets creators tag items for purchase within a livestream.   But TikTok is testing an in-app checkout that connects to a product catalog.

A large majority (79%) of tech workers would rely on artificial intelligence for everyday tasks, compared with just 48% of the general public, according to this MITRE-Harris Poll survey.  We don’t know whether AI experts share the tech workers’ confidence, which is a bit worrisome since tech workers will control the pace of AI deployment.  Tech workers and the public agree that government and industry should do more to protect against AI problems.