Nextech AR also supports virtual events, although it’s just one of many uses for its augmented reality technology.  Their latest venture is to add the ultimate real-world touch to their event experiences: advertising!  Yep, they’ve set up a network to sell ads to virtual event attendees.   Perhaps they can add some stale pastry and luke-warm coffee to complete the simulation.

Advertisers can hope, but the odds against person-based targeting keep falling.  Firefox just extended its already-strong anti-tracking features by adding “cookie jars” that prevent websites from sharing cookies with each other. And privacy-centric browser firm Brave just bought independent search engine Tailcat, which promises not to track users.

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.