Earlier in the company lifecycle, podcast hosting and ad serving platform ART19 raised a $7.5 million Series A. More people listen to podcasts in the U.S. than use Twitter, according the ART19 founder Sean Carr. ART19 can dynamically insert ads into podcasts, helping creators generate more revenue.
Gravity4 calls itself “the world’s first A.I. big data marketing cloud”, which sounds suspiciously fluffy but is backed by some substance. They focus mostly on programmatic advertising but have “apps” that support other channels. Latest news is they’ve released a blockchain-based service for paid digital advertising. Bonus trivia: the product is called “Lydian” in honor of Lydia, the first civilization to use coins (not Lydia, the tattooed lady).
If anything is more credible than academic acceptance, it’s funding. So that AI-driven analytics vendor ThoughtSpot has raised more than $160 million speaks for itself. ThoughtSpot just announced SpotIQ, which automatically queries enterprise data sources and returns “deep and relevant insights for users that they may not have thought to look for on their own”. The company says that “SpotIQ accomplishes in a single click what could take 40,000 man hours.” It doesn’t say which men, doing what, or how long it would take a team of women.
CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising. The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products. Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.