Why did Singapore Telecommunications’ ad tech subsidiary Amobee buy Adconion and Kontera for a combined $385 million? For Amobee CEO Mark Strecker, it was a matter of moving Amobee’s focus from mobile advertising to digital advertising. And the company needed Kontera’s technological assets and Adconion’s business organization to accomplish that. Once integrated, Amobee will have […]
Tealium became the latest tag management system (TMS) provider to pivot away from pure play TMS on Wednesday when it released a tool designed to help companies link their various standalone marketing technologies. This puts Tealium on the same path as other TMS providers (like BrightTag, which renamed itself Signal and rolled out an Open […]
As if taking a cue from tech counterparts uniting their point solutions onto a single platform (like Salesforce1, Neustar’s PlatformOne and AOL’s ONE), enterprise giant IBM Tuesday rolled out IBM “ExperienceOne,” a cloud and on-premise tech portfolio that is a culmination of its acquisitions and services. These include Sterling Commerce, DemandTec, Tealeaf, Unica and Xtify. It will be […]
When ad tech company IgnitionOne acquired data-management platform (DMP) Knotice, did it become a marketing cloud? CEO Will Margiloff would say the company was one even before. In the most literal sense, he’s right: “We decided back in 2011, well before anyone talked about marketing clouds, that you need to integrate the disparate pieces of […]
Jonathan Becher has a lot on his mind this week. As CMO of global German enterprise software company SAP, which employs 67,000, he spearheads the messaging for a multi-billion dollar public business. And on Sunday, that business announced the departure of Vishal Sikka, one of its product pioneers who tirelessly evangelized SAP’s high-speed-everything engine HANA. […]
Salesforce.com released Tuesday the Radian6 + Buddy Media Social Studio, indicating new life for a string of social acquisitions the company has made in recent years. “For the first time, you can listen, publish content, and track it through to results all as part of a stack that also includes email, Web, and mobile,” said […]
Oracle hosted a “launch event” Wednesday to introduce its Marketing Cloud, though the fact that Oracle has a suite is about as newsworthy as the world’s roundness. The enterprise software giant has been using that particular nomenclature since it acquired marketing automation solution Eloqua in December 2012. Oracle’s Marketing Cloud has several components. In addition to Eloqua, there’s social […]
Call 2011 and 2012 the first wave of social CRM, when companies like Salesforce.com and Oracle snapped up social media analytics and marketing companies. Little more than one year later, all signs point toward paid media becoming a part of the enterprise social stack with more M&A and partnerships likely to come. Although CRM, in […]
Adobe’s fiscal Q1 (Oct to Dec 2013) delivered healthy demand for its six-product-strong Marketing Cloud suite, which includes Media Optimizer, Social, Analytics, Target, Experience Manager and the newest entrant to the pack, Campaign. “When we look at prospects for Marketing Cloud, we are optimistic,” CEO Shantanu Narayen said during Tuesday’s earnings call. Customers licensing Marketing Cloud products in Q1 include […]
Barely two weeks after basking in the glow of its BlueKai buy, enterprise software giant Oracle is at it again – this time debuting an open paid media partner API program for Oracle Social Cloud. One of the many questions arising from the BlueKai deal (as well as other Oracle Marketing Cloud acquisitions including Responsys, […]
Salesforce.com reported 37% revenue growth in Q4, to $1.15 billion, driven in part by the $2.5 billion July 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget. Its full year revenue was $4.07 billion, up 33% year-over-year. ExactTarget is the lynchpin of ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, which competes with analogous stacks fielded by Adobe and Oracle. Specifically, ExactTarget contributed $96 million in […]
Is the union between Oracle and BlueKai, in the words of Ovum Research Senior Analyst Gerry Brown, a case of “the cat amongst the pigeons?” There might be some credence to the idea. As Brown points out, BlueKai is (or has been) a champion of open systems. Oracle is not. “Certainly few BlueKai partners will […]
“Marketer’s Note” is a weekly column informing marketers about the rapidly evolving, digital marketing technology ecosystem. It is written by Joanna O’Connell, Director of Research, AdExchanger Research. The rumor mill exploded late last week, with talk of a BlueKai acquisition by technology giant Oracle, and today, Oracle made it official. Extending the thinking from a […]
Oracle’s planned acquisition of data exchange and solutions provider BlueKai pushes Oracle deeper into marketing tech. Like its peers IBM and SAP, Oracle had prioritized business departments like supply chain, finance and HR above media buying and digital marketing. And rather than building a marketing and ad stack from scratch in order to clinch CMO […]
Enterprise software provider Oracle moved further into targeted advertising by acquiring BlueKai, a third-party data provider and data management platform (DMP). Analysts and vendors differ however, on the mobile advertising implications behind the acquisition. Bluekai’s technology will be combined with Oracle’s Responsys application, which is geared toward B2C marketing campaigns, as well as Eloqua, which […]
Oracle will acquire data services and technology company BlueKai for an estimated $350 to $400 million, bringing together one of the largest enterprise software companies with a market leading data management platform (DMP). If the acquisition goes through, it would help solidify the Oracle’s previously uncertain position in the digital advertising space. It also represents […]
Enterprise technology providers like Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce.com have engaged over the last four years in a marketing cloud arms race, snapping up point solutions at breakneck speed. Consider that from 2010 to 2013, tech giants cumulatively spent close to $30 billion acquiring marketing solutions. The press releases announcing each of these acquisitions tend to […]
Bizo, a maker of B2B digital media and marketing solutions, is betting on the growing importance of paid media to marketing tech. After citing Q4 gross revenue of $12.4 million and a $50 million annual run rate with media costs that average in the 35-40% range, Bizo’s CEO Russ Glass said Bizo for Marketing Automation, […]
Oracle’s deal to acquire Responsys comes with a key question: What will Oracle’s future hold for digital advertisers? When Oracle snapped up Eloqua for $810 million last December, a chain reaction of subsequent purchases followed, from Salesforce.com’s acquisition of ExactTarget to Adobe’s Neolane buy mere months later. As competitors rush to build or acquire digital […]
Cross-channel marketing software company Responsys has entered into an agreement to be bought by Oracle for a total sum of $1.5 billion, the companies announced Friday. Responsys, which has a customer base of 450 companies, of which many are direct-to-consumer brands like LEGO, Nordstrom, Whole Foods and MetLife, will be integrated into the Oracle Marketing Cloud and […]
Adobe Systems attributed $316 million of revenue in Q4 to its six-product suite, Adobe Marketing Cloud, a 38% year-over-year increase. Adobe Marketing Cloud, which includes Adobe Analytics, Adobe Social, Adobe Target, Adobe Media Optimizer, Adobe Campaign and Adobe Experience Manager, “continues to do exceedingly well,” said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen during the Q4 earnings call […]
You can’t throw a 23-year-old media buyer without hitting a software “cloud.” One of the precocious contenders in this bunch, social-centric SHIFT, has raised $6 million to support an expansion of its Open Marketing Cloud into Europe. The investment, led by DN Capital, brings its total financing to $14 million. The company’s 29-year-old CEO, James […]
Enterprise software companies are racing to soak up marketers’ budgets by building out their marketing suites with acquisitions, partnerships and new products. Those players include Adobe, Salesforce.com, Oracle and IBM. As the year comes to a close, here’s a snapshot look at these companies’ marketing stacks and some of the gaps that each company has […]
Oracle has acquired cloud content marketing platform Compendium for an undisclosed sum. Oracle, which bought marketing automation company Eloqua for $871 million last December, has since formalized that deal into the Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud and has plans to improve “top-of-the-funnel” customer engagement with its acquisition of Compendium, according to the company. These moves are […]
On the heels of Accenture’s acquisition of digital marketing and strategy consultancy Acquity Group and the announcement that followed of a partnership with ecommerce platform hybris, executives from all companies gathered today in New York to talk forward moves with hybris’ new parent company, German enterprise giant SAP. “We have, in the past, spent a […]
As Salesforce.com and Oracle CEOs Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison demonstrated last week, what CEOs say in public can rarely be taken at face value. Following a bitter rivalry and lots of name-calling, Oracle and Saleforce.com announced a nine-year partnership to integrate Salesforce.com’s CRM software and Oracle’s cloud-hosted human resources and financial applications. There was […]
With digital marketing budgets expected to rise this year, customer relationship management (CRM) software vendors are ramping up their pursuit of paid media budgets. “Marketing is perhaps the hottest area in the customer-facing realm right now, and it is evident the place has multiple holes to fill and many approaches to take,” observed Paul Greenberg, […]
Marketing automation vendor Marketo has filed for a $75 million IPO, adding fuel to speculation on whether it will soon be snapped up in an acquisition. From 2010 to 2012, Marketo’s revenue grew from $14 million to $58.4 million, according to its S1 filing. The San Mateo, Calif.-based marketing automation firm has raised $108 million in venture funding […]
Following its string of social media acquisitions, Oracle has pulled all its social capabilities into one product, allowing marketers to create and publish content, listen to and engage customers, and analyze interactions from a single interface. Unveiled at the South by Southwest conference, Oracle’s Social Relationship Management (SRM) product ties together capabilities gained when the […]
Most media industry observers expect to see a another strong year in M&A for the Ad Tech sector. For example, a survey [PDF] of 231 top media/tech executives released last week from media investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. and Econsultancy shows an upward trend in organizations planning an acquisition in the next 12 months, […]
