The marketing automation industry went through its own acquisition phase several years ago. Act-On Software never got bought but they did survive. The company just raised $20 million in a combination of debt and equity, bringing its total funding to $92 million. It’s their first substantial round since a $45 million investment in 2014.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to mention that livestream shopping is now a thing. It’s part of the larger trend for social ecommerce, which itself belongs to the still larger trend of retailers looking for ways to escape from Amazon’s clutches. So while you may not really care that Nordstrom is adding a livestream channel, at least you know why I’m telling you about it.
Was Zaius on your CDP acquisition bingo card? If so, you can tick that box, because they were just purchased by digital experience platform Optimizely, which was Episerver until recently. Like other recent CDP purchases, the deal gives the buyer a way to unify multiple customer-facing systems: Episerver had seven previous acquisitions including three in the past two years.
In partnership with attention metrics provider Adelaide, The Trade Desk is now offering high attention inventory to advertisers. Attention — often based on reactions of opt-in panels to ads — is now competing with viewability as a valued attribute, and is being used to complement contextual metrics. Attention has been used in the past to test ads once they have been published; now it’s entering the pre-bid space.