If I remember correctly, the television sets in Orwell’s 1984 were surveillance devices. Coincidentally or not, today’s connected TV enables advertisers to know exactly who’s watching what. LiveRamp has further improved things by connecting TV viewers with their email, mobile, postal, and other identities. “Consumers can experience meaningful and relevant brand-connection moments across screens” says LiveRamp, blithely assuming that’s a benefit.

You may have thought today’s theme was mobile, but it’s really partnerships. Ha! We’ll finish news that marketing management platform Aprimo and digital experience platform Episerver are working together. The alliance lets Episerver users apply of Aprimo’s digital asset management and marketing resource management functions to unify content management and campaign planning. Interestingly, Episerver and Aprimo are both owned by different private equity investors.

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.