Ad holding giant WPP has combined 700 people in its data specialist groups at GroupM and Wunderman Thompson to create a new global company called Choreograph. The goal is to take help clients make better use of their first party data for audience insights, identity solutions, media optimization, and predictive analytics.

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.