Private equity investors continue to replace public markets as the main buyers of marketing and advertising tech companies. Latest transaction is DoubleVerify, which battles online ad fraud by authenticating that impressions are viewed and the viewers are human. Buyer was Providence Equity Partners. They didn’t announce a price but the Wall Street Journey says they paid around $200 million for a majority stake.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.