Marketers hire agencies when they lack in-house skills. Eying the martech talent gap, Interpublic Group spent $2 billion last year to purchase data-driven marketing services company Acxiom. They’ve now launched Kinesso, which will rely on Acxiom to create applications that use data to improve media results. Kinesso will also incorporate Cadreon, Interpublic’s addressable media activation unit.
Salesforce quietly raised $666 million in equity last week, according to SEC papers noticed by Owler. No word from the company on what they’ll do with it.
Finally, Kubient has launched a real time bidding solution for digital out of home advertising. Because you never know when you’ll feel that sudden urge to buy a billboard.
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.