Marketing automation platform Selligent has been purchased by CM Group, which owns other email companies including Sailthru, Campaign Monitor, Emma, and Delivra. The deal adds AI capabilities to the CM Group portfolio and will enable Selligent to expand mobile messaging, analytics, and real-time personalization. Selligent was owned by private equity firm HGGC, which bought it in 2015.

Dentsu’s Merkle group also had its origins in the 1970’s. They just signed a deal for Adobe to integrate Merkle’s Merkury identity resolution platform. It’s another move to strengthen first party data capabilities as third party data becomes harder to find.

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.