Adobe has announced that Microsoft-Accenture joint venture Avanade will build a practice to connect Adobe Experience Manager and Campaign with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure. The deal illustrates the importance of such integration and how hard it is. Adobe, Microsoft and Accenture are all partners in the Open Database Initiative but apparently have decided that direct Adobe-Microsoft integrations can’t wait for ODI to be ready.

NewsCred helps companies plan, execute, and measure content marketing programs. Not as sexy as privacy (who ever thought they’d be reading that?) but still important. They’ve just taken $20 million in new funding, bringing their total to about $109 million.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.