CEOs are leaning heavily on marketing and communications to drive short-term profits and long-term growth in 2024, with 95% planning to maintain or increase funding for AI capabilities for those teams. Seventy-nine percent anticipate a positive effect of AI on the marketing function. This is based on a survey of over 1200 international CEOs.
Less funding, fewer product announcements and reduced M&A activity were the hallmarks of the martech space in 2023, said stack management platform CabinetM in their year end review. The slowdown became gradually visible as the year wore on with the worst performance in all categories in Q4. Unsurprisingly, Q4 investment heavily favored AI (22% of funding) with workflow and productivity in second place.
Omnichannel supply-side platform OpenX has created a Cookieless Deal Library that will enable advertisers to evaluate the full range of cookieless targeting options to activate in the DSP of their choice. This will allow the testing of multiple cookieless solutions, including against each other, and the development of new success benchmarks. The options include, but are not limited to, alternative identifier deals, contextual deals and Privacy Sandbox Topics deals.
CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising. The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products. Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.