Also on the integration front, Contentful raised a $33.5 million Series D for its API-based approach to content management. Salesforce did participate in this one, if you’re keeping score. Contentful positions itself as a replacement for legacy content management system. If you’re looking for something smart-sounding to say at your holiday party, “content management is the next marketing automation” would do nicely.
Customer identity data vendor Infutor has purchased Ruf Strategic Solutions, which provides customer segment data and marketing automation. The deal caps two years of strong growth at Infutor, following a strategic investment by Norwest Venture Partners. Looks like third party data isn’t dead.
How popular is intent data? Well, 35% of companies use it when measuring audience coverage, according to a survey for B2B data vendor DealSignal by Demand Gen Report. That compares with 87% for contact information, 45% for account characteristics, and 40% for product usage. More worrisome: only 20% use third party data to improve their information even though 60% are less than “mostly confident” that their current data is adequate.
A U.S. district court judge has ruled that Google acted to create illegal monopolies in online advertising technology in a way that blocked competition and allowed higher ad prices to be charged. Google will appeal; meantime, the government will decide what to ask the court to do to remedy the monopoly. Google also faces a new U.K. antitrust lawsuit over its dominance of search.