If there’s a gold standard for inflated expectations, surely it is set by blockchain. IAB Tech Lab has just announced a program to bring some reality to the digital advertising corner of the blockchain universe by creating a mechanism for testing blockchain-based products and services. The ultimate goal is standards to guide industry-wide deployment. This is worth watching.
Here’s one of those “I thought they could already do that” items: identity specialist Signal announced the ability to do real-time identity resolution and data onboarding, meaning it can look up external data about a Web site visitor as soon as they appear. Looking up internal data about known visitors isn’t unique but identifying and appending external data about unknown visitors is something else.
Finally, news that in-app video advertising platform Vungle was bought by private equity investor Blackstone for a reported $750 million or more. You probably wouldn’t have read this if that number weren’t so large. I know I wouldn’t have written it.
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.