CDP Institute

“Look on the bright side,” sings Stephen Sondheim’s Charles J. Guiteau as he waits to be hanged.  In that spirit, financial advisory firm Ciesco reports that 2022 was a “buoyant year for M&A activity”, with a 20% increase in deal volume, including a 12% rise for martech.  Announced deal value was down by half but we won’t dwell on that.

“Get off your backside, shine those shoes,” counsels the ever-optimistic Guiteau.  Media agency GroupM is taking that advice to heart in the battle against global warming, with an update to its advertising carbon impact calculator.  The new version offers channel-level measurements and uses supply chain emissions data from Scope3.

Guiteau’s “Inside the bad side something’s good” might be the motto at Atlanta-based Terminus Software, which followed a quiet 15% layoff last May with an equally unannounced $24 million funding in January.  Don’t confuse them with Dublin-based TerminusDB, which just announced a new “open-source, headless, and developer-focus content and knowledge management system”.   As Guiteau would say, “I am so glad.”

B2B data and tech company Demandbase announced $175 million in new financing from Vista Credit Partners.  It’s the company’s first raise since 2017 and more than doubles total funding to $318 million.  Demandbase is one of relatively few martech firms to take major new funding this year.

Social shopping continues its decidedly mixed progress.  Instagram is shutting down live shopping, which lets creators tag items for purchase within a livestream.   But TikTok is testing an in-app checkout that connects to a product catalog.

A large majority (79%) of tech workers would rely on artificial intelligence for everyday tasks, compared with just 48% of the general public, according to this MITRE-Harris Poll survey.  We don’t know whether AI experts share the tech workers’ confidence, which is a bit worrisome since tech workers will control the pace of AI deployment.  Tech workers and the public agree that government and industry should do more to protect against AI problems.

Mobile marketing measurement vendor Kochava is mostly in the news these days for its battle with the Federal Trade Commission over location data sales.    But they also have good news.  Most recent is acquisition of Machine Advertising, which provides incremental results measurement and optimal budget allocations for app marketing programs.

Augeo offers services and technology related to live and web events, loyalty, channel relationships, and employee engagement.  They just bought Brand Networks, which provides social media advertising solutions.  It’s Augeo’s seventh acquisition since 2019.

DoubleVerify keeps expanding the channels it supports with media measurement and anti-fraud services.  Their latest leap is a service to verify viewability of Connected TV ads.  DoubleVerify estimates that CTV advertisers paid more than $1 billion last year for ads on TV sets which were turned off.