Martech’s portion of the marketing budget is set to rise from 19% this year to 22.7% in next year, 31.7% in five years, according to the CMO Survey. This despite 54.9% seeing less payoff from martech use than expected. While almost 80% of companies use martech, it’s surprising that around 45% of marketing activities are martech free (are spreadsheets martech?).
A California judge has issued an injunction preventing WordPress and its co-founder Matt Mullenweg from blocking WP Engine’s access to WordPress resources and interfering with WP Engine plugins. The conflict arose when Mullenweg blocked WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org servers after accusing WP Engine of misusing the WordPress trademark and requesting a share of its revenue. WordPress owner Automattic blamed WP Engine for making its business dependent on WordPress services.
While the CMO survey reports expectations of modest martech budget increases, marketing executives surveyed by Merkle are bullish about overall marketing budget hikes. This is based on an optimistic economic outlook (86% think that the economy will improve over the next 6-12 months). They are also seeing increased revenues (only 13% said revenue was flat or in decline).
Changes in marketing channels and data access have made advertising measurement more important, and challenging, than ever. Taking advantage of growing interest in the topic, Bain Capital is selling Kantar Group’s audience measurement division, Kantar Media, to global investment firm H.I.G. Capital for “approximately $1 billion”. Kantar Media accounts for 4,500 of Kantar Group’s 25,000 employees.