Cracking the telco market has been tough for CDP vendors due to high volumes, special needs, a preference for on-premises solutions, and deeply entrenched competitors. Rather than go it alone, Microsoft is teaming with telco specialist Amdocs to integrate Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud products with Amdocs’ Commerce and Care suite. The Microsoft CDP is in there somewhere.
Wunderkind, formerly BounceX, just raised a $76 million Series C, bringing its total to $152 million. The company targets ads based on website behavior. It works mostly with first-party data, including ads based on publishers’ own data. This limits privacy issues although some people still feel behavioral targeting is creepy.
The adtech space is suffering from increasing privacy restraints, declining ad sales, and new competitors such as Connected TV and Retail Media Networks. One result is consolidation. Today we have two deals to report: ad automation platform Simpli.fi is buying contextual and native ad specialist Bidtellect; and, ad monetization vendor MonetizeMore is buying Advanced Ads, which builds ad management tools for WordPress sites.
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.