Sticking with business news, identity management vendor Okta has acquired workflow vendor Azuqua. TechCrunch reported the price at $52.5 million. Azuqua will make it easier for Okta clients to build applications that span systems without requiring employees and customers to log in more than once.
Business intelligence vendor Domo has continued its extension beyond reporting with Campaigns, which can generate real-time event-triggered email marketing messages. Domo says that Campaigns can replace marketing automation for most types of email campaigns. Other marketing applications will follow.
One exciting possibility for out of home ads is to combine them with augmented reality experiences. Geon Network, which has more than 1.5 million AR objects in place worldwide, rewards consumers for spending time at real-world locations. They just announced a partnership with XYO, which captures consumer locations and provides a cryptocurrency for payments.
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.