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.
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.
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.
Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.