Video is great but some things are still more fun in person. I’m talking about business meetings, of course. Event management system Bizzabo has just raised $27 million to expand its business, bringing total funding to $56 million.
Are you tired of stories about tying online behavior to real-world store visits, Dear Reader? What once seemed magical now seems common. Still, it’s arguably the greatest revolution in marketing measurement since the dawn of mass media. In any case, here’s another one: Location data company Factual has launched a new product that correlates ad exposure to visits, using data from Factual’s graph of 300 million devices. Marketers can compare exposed to non-exposed groups to estimate incremental campaign impact.
In a bit of a head scratcher, Salesforce has purchased its own nonprofit spin-off, Salesforce.org, for $300 million. The money will go the philanthropic Salesforce Foundation. Salesforce.org, which makes Salesforce software available to nonprofits at deep discounts or for free, will now be part of the for-profit Salesforce.com business. Salesforce expects the change to help it grow sales in the non-profit, education, and philanthropy sectors.
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.