The CDP industry had a good first half, with existing vendors growing a solid 10% and eleven new vendors, according to the CDP Institute’s latest Industry Update.  But investment activity was down, with just one big deal ($175 million for Bloomreach) and one acquisition (BlueConic sold a majority stake to Vista Equity Partners).  Lots more here, of course.

Influencer marketing occupies an untamed corner of the media jungle, although plenty of companies have tried to civilize it.  The Association of National Advertisers is helping with a set of guidelines for measuring influencer marketing results.  The guidelines offer definitions for different awareness, engagement, and conversion metrics plus a handy chart of how different social platforms do their calculations.

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.