Alas, we have more typically negative news about Google. They’ve announced an API change that would prevent most ad blockers from working in their Chrome browser. The change would also disable many antivirus, parental control, and privacy-enhancing services. Yikes! Google might change its plan in response to industry complaints.
Digital behavior analysis vendor Contentsquare has raised a $60 million Series C, bringing its total funding to $120 mllion. Contentsquare captures Web and mobile app behaviors, provides journey analytics, heatmaps, and other reporting, and uses artificial intelligence to alert marketers to interesting situations. Founded in 2012, the Paris-based firm now has more than 300 employees worldwide.
Jamie is still on loan to our Department of Counter-Intuitive Results. He offers news that Verizon, a telecom provider not usually associated with great customer experience, is selling a suite of customer service tools. These connect self-service and call center systems with a unified customer view and apply AI to select customer treatments. The ads just write themselves: Now you can offer your own customers that great Verizon experience!
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.