Meta may be under fire by regulators and distrusted by consumers, but never forget that its core advertising business is a gold mine.  The company reported $29.65 billion revenue for the first quarter of 2023.  That’s up 3% from the pandemic-depressed Q1 last year, which isn’t great but better than the year-on-year declines in every quarter since.

If you need to be reminded what healthy growth looks like: Amazon reported a 21% year-on-year gain in Q1 retail media revenue, $9.5 billion.  Amazon accounts for 85% of the industry, according to eMarketer.  While some reports have predicted a slowdown in retail media, Skai takes a brighter view: 87% of advertisers plan to maintain or increase retail media spending this year.  Plot twist: funds for retail media most often come from the paid search budget, but are usually managed by ecommerce staff.

Let’s catch up today on news that went unmentioned while we obsessed about TikTok, Google, Microsoft, and the rest. First, some CX acquisitions: Stockholm-based experience analytics vendor Netigate bought Netherlands-based digital feedback collector Mopinion while Colorado-based survey platform Alchemer bought San Diego-based review and comment collector Chatmeter. We also have “AI-native operating system for advertising” Veylan buying media sales platform Advisr and, far from least, investment firm Thoma Bravo spending $1.4 billion to buy SaaS pricing and sales solution PROS Holdings, Inc.