Adobe is creating a new organization to expand its sales to small and mid-size business. The new unit will offer SMB-tailored versions of Magento, Marketo, Adobe Analytics, e-signature, and Creative Cloud. Adobe’s Magento acquisition in 2018 gave it a major foothold in the SMB market.
As more advertisers buy media for themselves, media companies are rushing to provide tools to help. Streaming video company Roku just bought dataxu, a Demand Side Platform used to manage digital ad campaigns. Price was $150 million.
Like other martech outsiders, the big ad holding companies have bought customer data expertise: see Merkle/Dentsu, Acxiom/IPG, and Epsilon/Publicis. WPP’s Wunderman Thompson has plenty of customer data experience – the late Lester Wunderman coined the term “direct marketing” in 1967 – but they still aren’t building their own systems. Instead, they’ve just announced a deal to use Tealium’s AudienceStream CDP within their Customer Cloud platform.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.