Private equity firm Blackstone also did a little self-gifting, spending a reported near-$400 million for a majority share in mobile app marketing platform Liftoff. The product uses AI to identify engaged users, run creative tests, and optimize media buys. Other recent Blackstone investments include Ancestry.com, Bumble, and Vungle.
Finally, the news you really wanted to hear: events are back. Or they will be at some point this year. Event tech vendor Splash found that 21% of companies expect to do purely in-person events in 2021 and the rest plan to mix online and in-person activities at the same event.
BigID announces $70M in funding; valuation now exceeds $1B BigID, which closed on the funding earlier this year also announced its platform can now be integrated with SaaS applications from ServiceNow.
Digital advertising platform PubMatic’s new partnership with GroupM, WPP’s media investment group, will enable the delivery of AI-powered cohort modeling to advertisers. Using a distributed AI model developed by Resolve, the collaboration aims to generate privacy-compliant audience segments across multiple publishers simultaneously. Not only does the targeting not rely on third party cookies, it also eradicates the need for user data to be moved or shared during the ad buying process.