Inflation-challenged marketers are putting a new stress on efficiency, according to this Merkle report.  They’re eagerly new channels such as retail media networks and connected TV, while prioritizing creative and analytics investments that can optimize performance in all media. And, yes, they’re worried that privacy changes will impact both targeting and measurement.  Download for more interesting insights.

Some investors are still spending money: India-based CRM LeadSquared announced a $153 million Series C, bringing total funding to $188 million.  In an unusually revealing report, the company says it had about $25 million revenue last year and 1,200 employees, yielding $22,000 revenue per employee.  That’s less than one-tenth of HubSpot or Salesforce.  Not good or bad, but interesting.

Adobe has announced a new solution within its GenStudio suite, GenStudio for Performance Marketing. This self-service application is aimed at accelerating the creation of display and social ads, emails and banners using approved, on-brand content. The solution will leverage Adobe Firefly as well as third-party LLMs.