The integrated cloud communications market is relevant here because it increasingly overlaps with marketing systems. So you should probably care at least a little that cloud-based communications platform 8×8 has agreed to pay $250 million for Fuze, which offers roughly similar products.
Respondents to this CompTIA survey are actually quite positive, expecting higher tech budgets and less anti-technology backlash in 2022. What caught my eye was that 30% said marketing tech budgets are too low – more than any other department. That’s great because it means they’ll be more open to your request for an increase, right?
Here’s a de-acquisition story just to mix things up: the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority has ordered Meta, owner of Facebook, to reverse last year’s purchase of animated GIF distributor Giphy. The Authority felt the deal reduced potential competition for ad sales and could let Facebook/Meta reduce other competitors’ access to Giphy GIFs or demand more data from them. It’s one more sign that regulators everywhere are turning on Meta/Facebook after years of neglect.
ChatGPT-4o is the latest model released by OpenAI and available to all (including free) users. The “o” stands for “OMNI,” reflecting the model’s capabilities for voice and image as well as text. For marketing teams, this might mean one source for genAI capabilities rather than switching between LLMs and solutions specifically focused on visuals.