Here’s an anti-acquisition: Antivirus software vendor Avast is shutting down its Jumpshot subsidiary, which was just revealed to be selling huge amounts of browsing data from Avast users. The data was technically anonymous and technically gathered with user consent, but new privacy attitudes now make Jumpshot’s practices harder to defend.
I’ll say it again: the death of third party data is greatly exaggerated. Here’s news that Lifesight, which has been collecting and sharing location, content, purchase, and other data for several years, has just launched the latest version of its flagship product, Flux. It’s now easier than ever to build custom ad audiences and measure the impact of marketing campaigns on store traffic.
Mobile messaging platform Attentive has also raised more than $100 million, although it took a $70 million Series C to push them over the mark to $124 million total. They also doubled their headcount and tripled their revenue last year. But, being at the enterprise end of the spectrum, they have well under 1,000 clients.
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.