Google announced a range of advertising improvements at its Google Live conference. Changes include Zapier integration for CRM connections, expanded cross-channel attribution analytics and testing, auto-created responsive search ads, and connected TV campaigns targeted against affinition, in-market, and demographic audiences. Several other goodies too, if you’re interested.
BUD, a Singapore-based metaverse user-generated platform, announces its $36.8 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India. The company intends to use the fresh funding to further develop its creation tools, grow its global user base and roll out web3 products for its metaverse ecosystem. It has also revealed clear plans to launch its own non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.
Grab Financial Group, has launched a new brand, GrabFin, for its digital payment, insurance, lending and wealth management offerings. With GrabFin, Grab users will be offered a single entry point to access payment, investment and insurance services on the Grab app. Following its launch in Singapore and Malaysia, the GrabFin brand will be progressively rolled out in other Southeast Asian markets in the coming months.
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.