CDP Institute

Meanwhile, work management platform Asana announced completion of its $50 million Series E, bringing total 2018 funding to $125 million and cumulative funding to $213 million. The round was shared by a half-dozen investors.

Finally, Marlin Equity Partners completed its purchase of media collaboration platform SHIFT, which specializes in sharing content for the media and entertainment industries. Marlin is another frequent martech investor, with a portfolio including Aprimo, Bazaarvoice, and Blue Hornet.

Amazon had a great Cyber Monday of course. One way they encouraged that was to bury news of a customer data breach that leaked out the day before Thanksgiving. Amazon did the absolute bare minimum, informing affected customers in vague terms where it was legally obligated to do so and refusing to answer press inquiries. If you haven’t heard about that breach, well, that was the idea. And if you’ve been getting an unusual number of phishing emails, you might know who to blame.

Ah, but here’s some good news: Google and anti-ad-fraud vendor White Ops announced they have dismantled one of the biggest and most sophisticated ad fraud operations ever. The :”3ve” botnet infected at least 1.7 million computers at any time, counterfeited more than 10,000 Web sites, and generated from 3 to 12 billion requests per day to sell fake online advertising. The U.S. Attorney in New York filed criminal charges against the fraudsters. This does count as good news, right?

By now you’ve seen plenty of reports about record-breaking online sales during the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday-to-Cyber-Monday period. But you might still be surprised that Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram drove 94% of all social traffic to retail sites. So says a report from Salesforce drawing from data captured in its systems. What, you thought Salesforce couldn’t see its client data? Don’t be silly.

Tech analysis firm Forrester has agreed to buy B2B advisory SiriusDecisions for $245 million. Forrester says the deal doubles its potential market by adding operational expertise to Forrester’s strategic consulting. Sirius is expected to add approximately $100 million revenue in 2019, giving the deal a 2.5x revenue multiple. It’s a ratio similar to Forrester’s own $820 million market capitalization on about $340 million revenue.

Meanwhile, $4 billion printing company Quad/Graphics continued its move towards integrated marketing services by purchasing creative agency Periscope for $132.5 million. Quad had already bought digital marketing agency Rise Interactive and marketing services company Ivie & Associates. Quad’s market cap is almost identical to Forrester’s, at $830 million, or just over 0.2x revenue.

More turmoil: Alliance Data announced it is seeking “strategic alternatives”, including a sale, for its $2.2 billion Epsilon marketing and data subsidiary. Alliance Data is approaching $8 billion revenue with a market cap of $10.6 billion or 1.3x revenue.

“Slow news day” doesn’t do justice to how slim the news pickings are right now, Dear Reader. We’re reduced to leading off with “sign of the times” news that WPP is merging its fabled Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson agencies into uncreatively-named Wunderman Thompson, which will be “distinctively positioned” as a provider of “end-to-end solutions – through creative, data, commerce, consulting and technology services – at a global scale.” Such combinations have been an industry trend for years. Healthy, yes. Distinctive, not so much.

Here’s a more surprising finding: a survey from the SoDA digital agency trade group found that technologists outnumber marketers when it comes to owning digital strategy (45% tech vs 28% marketing), owning customer experience (39% tech vs. 23% marketing) and even picking digital agencies (47% tech vs 46% marketing).

Doubtful that technologists are really in charge of CX? Maybe you’re right: a CMO Council and IBM survey found that 61% said marketing owned customer experience strategy. Just 13% of respondents were CMOs while 61% were CEO, President, or COO. So less bias in that audience than you might expect. Only 20% said they had real-time access to all relevant customer data across the organization. Technology gaps were the most common obstacle to removing data silos (53%), although talent (48%) and time (45%) were close behind.

We rarely write about blog posts but know you’re curious about the CDP-like CX Unity product that Oracle announced last month. So you’ll probably appreciate this Customer Experience Matrix blog post clarifying what it does. Bottom line: it’s closer to the CDP Institute’s CDP definition than it originally seemed.