In Big Tech Behaving Badly, we have news that Google will be forced to make major changes to its Android business model in India after losing an anti-trust appeal. Meanwhile, Twitter’s latest questionable choice is to ban third-party clients . And Jamie from our Department of the Obvious offers this University of Southern California study finding that the design of Facebook rewards users who spread fake news.
It’s an odd news day, Dear Reader, with the general items more interesting than the transactions. To make room, I’ll combine the transactions here. Social media management vendor Sprout Social has purchased. AI-based sentimental analysis firm Repustate. Oro has raised $13 million for its open-source B2B ecommerce platform. Copilot announced a $10 million Series A to build client portals for service businesses. Beaconstac has raised $25 million for QR codes, proving everything old is new.
Looking at adtech: we have good news from the UK, where a joint ISBA and PwC study found unattributable programmatic ad spend dropped from 15% to 3% and the portion of revenue actually reaching publishers rose from 51% to 57%, compared with their 2020 study. Winterberry Group pitches in with its massive, and fascinating, annual report on past and future ad spending. And LUMA offers its own magisterial review of digital media and marketing funding in 2022 (spoiler alert: it was down).
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.