Nothing too important for you today, Dear Reader, but we do have a few items that reinforce earlier themes. Here, for example, is yet another private equity investment in martech: a €200 million ($222 million) deal by Providence Equity Partners for a majority share in social advertising platform Smartly.io. Okay, it’s adtech not martech but we’ve pretty much stopped making that distinction, right?
The News Gods have left for vacation, leaving behind a few surveys to read during the holiday break. You might start with this Intrado set of Webcast benchmarks. They found that 39% of registrants actually attend on the appointed day, 61% of Webcasts include video, and 82% are accessed on mobile devices. That last suggests you might want to rethink those small-print graphics.
Sticking with financial news: integrated business application vendor Odoo just raised $90 million. The deal is a trend trifecta: open source, all-in-one software platforms, and private equity investors. Odoo claims 4.5 million users, most on its free version but some paying for Odoo Enterprise.
Salesforce has reversed course on its bid to acquire data management and integration platform Informatica a source has told Reuters. Informatica itself said that it is not in talks to be acquired. Salesforce stocks rose on this latest news while Informatica’s fell.