M&A activity in the marketing/advertising space accelerated in Q3 this year, bringing it to its highest level since H1 2022, according to LUMA’s latest research. Since the beginning of this year, it’s up 45% YoY on 2023. This seems to be in response to “soft landing” signals for the economy including the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut since the pandemic.
IT and legal are acting as roadblocks preventing agency access to first-party data, according to a survey of over 300 marketing and agency professionals by Funnel. Only 28% of marketers would block agency access. But only 22% of IT teams and 17% of legal teams are on board.
A pretty penny to pay given Marriott’s not sure it’s liable, but $52 million is the cost to satisfy the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and attorneys general of 49 states (and District of Columbia) for breaches that affected more than 300 million Marriott customers worldwide. The breaches were also investigated by the FBI who suspected hackers were working on behalf of the Chinese government.
There may have been a change of administration but the Trump Department of Justice is still calling for Google to sell its Chrome browser. The demand was repeated in a proposal signed by acting assistant attorney general Omeed Assefi. “Google’s conduct presents genuine danger to freedom in the marketplace and to robust competition in our economy,” the filing said.