The first half of this year saw a very slight uptick in digital commerce M&A activity compared with the second half of 2023. The rise is slight, from 1,063 deals to 1,089 but is said to reflect a recovery from the post-pandemic trend. Median revenue multiple in the space declined for the second consecutive six-month period.
One third of the 200 senior marketing executives surveyed by the CMO Council in partnership with Zeta Global say campaign performance needs to improve or has underperformed. They are still struggling to identify strategies that positively impact ROI. In good news, more than half said they had met revenue and customer acquisition goals last year (but B2C outperformed B2B on those counts).
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) confirmed LinkedIn will no longer use UK user data to train AI. The company confirmed it also won’t use data from the European Economic Area or Switzerland, at least “until further notice.” Elsewhere, users must make the change manually by going to their Data & Privacy setting and toggling “Off.”
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested the sale of the Chrome browser among other measures following last August’s guilty verdict in its search advertising antitrust suit (not to be confused with last week’s guilty verdict in the adtech antitrust lawsuit). Google is asking for a much narrower focus on deals to be the default search engine for Apple, Mozilla and others. There will be a three-week hearing on the government’s proposals.