SaaS purchase cycles have grown from 32 days in 2020 to 44 days in 2023, according to data from Vendr. Other measures are similarly grim: acquisition costs have more doubled, multi-year agreements are down, and stack consolidation means net new purchases have dropped from 30% of deals to 19%. One bright spot if you’re a seller: prices are higher because they’re easier to raise when you’re selling a renewal.
Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) – that is, ads that change for each viewer – comes in many flavors, and this Digiday study for Clinch finds few marketers are using the most advanced options. Only 20% create variations with AI vs 82% creating each version manually; only 32% use purchase history data vs 81% using individual demographics. Lots more here on third-party cookie replacements, creative/data/media team alignment, and where DCO delivers value.
Hero Digital offers the buyer’s perspective on B2B tech. Getting good product information is the biggest headache in the research stage, while integrating with existing systems and processes is the biggest after-purchase pain point. Sixty percent use a combination of platforms they’ve purchased and built in-house. Top reasons for building include greater control over company processes (59%), greater process efficiency (47%), and wanting to offer a unique customer experience (39%).
Enterprise AI vendor Uniphore has acquired CDP ActionIQ and cloud data engineering system Infoworks. The combination of products will create a Zero Data AI Cloud that simplifies AI deployments by enabling companies to access data for AI projects without moving it from existing systems. Prices were not announced.