Buying through social platforms is the trendiest. Flowspace reports it’s a high priority for 27% of companies and 71% report a higher ROI than other channels. Less expected: nearly as many cited data ownership (43%) as acquisitions (45%) as their main reason for doing social commence. CDPs were actually the most common investment (55%) for improving social commerce fulfillment.
Testing software before you buy it is trendier. Demostack makes it easier for Software-as-a-Service companies to create demonstrations and demo environments. They just raised a $34 million Series B, bringing total funding to $51.5 million.
Just in case you haven’t seen enough bad news recently, spam is getting worse, too. This summary from Axios reports that spam email rose 30% from 2020 to 2021, spam phone calls hit a six month high in March, and spam texts nearly doubled since last June. Sorry.
Google is facing another antitrust lawsuit, this time in Canada, specifically focusing on anti-competitive practices in online advertising. The Competition Tribunal has been asked to order Google to sell two of its ad tech tools, prohibit future anti-competitive practices and fine the company billions of dollars. In response, Google points to a highly competitive market offering plenty of alternatives.