Bitly was known as the de facto Twitter link shortener back in 2008. As that business commoditized – and Twitter, Google and other platforms released their own versions – Bitly recognized its real value was in the data exhaust left behind by its links. That spurred the enterprise platform Bitly OneView, a tool it launched […]
Lauren Nemeth, former head of sales for AppNexus, has joined Turn as chief revenue officer. She arrives from a stint at Pinterest-owned mobile search engine URX, and will oversee sales, client services and consulting. Prior to her role at AppNexus, she helped build Google’s programmatic business alongside Bruce Falck, Turn’s CEO. “We’re selling a complicated, […]
Tailoring individual messages to someone based on past behavior is easier said than done, since media and creative usually operate independently. Spongecell wants to fix some of the issues stymying dynamic creative optimization (DCO) at scale in the programmatic space, and has raised a $10.5 million growth round in combined debt and equity financing from […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is surging in ad/mar tech land. Or resurging, depending on how good your memory is. IBM continues to push Watson, and, in the run-up to their respective conferences, Salesforce and Oracle talked up their own AI initiatives. Also, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon banded together to create best practices around […]
The Marketing Cloud keynote address at Dreamforce included a phrase never before uttered publicly by a Salesforce exec: “You can’t be a marketing cloud without a DMP.” That was SVP and chief product officer Bryan Wade, speaking to around 3,200 Marketing Cloud partners and clients about Salesforce’s intent to acquire Krux. “Think of us as […]
Now that Salesforce has agreed to buy Krux for an estimated $700 million, which standalone data management platforms are left? And is there still a market for independent DMPs, given the trend toward integrated marketing tech stacks and the high cost of maintaining data infrastructure? To answer those questions, it’s important first to define terms, […]
Forget ecom platform Demandware and data management platform Krux. Investors only want to know why in the world Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has any interest in Twitter. The pounding Salesforce’s stock has taken since Benioff expressed interest certainly reflects their skepticism. So while the little blue bird hasn’t been an explicit presence in this year’s annual […]
Change isn’t easy. Just ask Farmers Insurance Group CMO Michael Linton and CIO Ron Guerrier. About three or four years ago, the company had a dismal digital presence. Its Net Promoter Score, which ranks customer loyalty from -100 to 100, was in the gutter at -30 and its website bounce rate was about 40%. “Our […]
Salesforce has shifted back into gear on ad tech M&A after a three-year quiet period. The company will snap up data management platform Krux in a move that could bring its marketing stack into closer parity with its archrival Oracle. The acquisition’s price tag is $700 million, a number that will put smiles on the faces […]
Demandware has officially ascended into the clouds. The ecommerce platform that Salesforce bought for $2.8 billion in June became Commerce Cloud Tuesday, and will gradually retire the Demandware brand. Next step: integration. While that process won’t be entirely onerous – Demandware and Salesforce Marketing Cloud clients have “significant overlap,” said Commerce Cloud marketing SVP Elana Anderson – there […]
