Yext helps local businesses manage directory listings, reviews, and other parts of their online presence. It’s a specialized but large corner of the marketing technology industry. They just completed their Initial Public Offering, a rare achievement these days. The IPO raised $133 million and yielded a $1.2 billion market capitalization. That’s ten times revenue if you track such things.
Marketo used to be a marketing automation system but it now calls itself an “engagement platform”. Whatever that is, it just got still broader with the company’s purchase of ToutApp, which helps salespeople send multi-step email campaigns. The extension from marketing to sales supports Marketo’s position in Account Based Marketing, which straddles both worlds.
More on ad measurement: comScore has expanded its “validated Campaign Essentials” to measure audience demographics, reach, frequency, and GRPs as well as viewability for Facebook display ads. The product already provided similar metrics for Facebook Audiences, Twitter, and Instagram. This is part of advertisers’ increasing resistance to unverified audience claims by the big social networks and to the networks’ power in general.
With CDP vendors increasing their workforces by 3.4% in six months, compared with an average of 0.2% each six months over the prior two years, the sector seems to be growing again, according to our own semi-annual industry update. There is much talk of composable CDPs but they still employ no more than 5% of the sector workforce. What is a clear trend is the acquisition of independent CDPs by vendors interested in adding a CDP to a larger system (usually an activation system).