CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 21 February 2019

Apple acquires DataTiger

Apple has reportedly acquired startup DataTiger to boost its digital marketing, according to reports.

The UK-based startup uses data and artificial intelligence capabilities to improve the digital marketing journey and was established in 2017.

The reports have not yet been confirmed officially by the tech giant. However, media sources point out regulatory filings show Apple gained control of Operatedata, the legal name of DataTiger, in December.

Brightcove to acquire Ooyala’s online video platform business

Video cloud services vendor, Brightcove, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the online video platform (OVP) business of Ooyala, a provider of cloud video technology.

Brightcove is acquiring Ooyala’s OVP technology, including video content management and publishing platform Backlot, Analytics, Live, and its underlying IP and associated patents. As part of the transaction, Brightcove will acquire substantial portions of Ooyala’s engineering, support and sales staff, including the company’s Guadalajara, Mexico operations.

Brightcove also intends to take on all customer, reseller and partner relationships utilised by Ooyala’s OVP business globally.

Over the past 15 years, Brightcove's platform has expanded into solutions supporting media, entertainment, marketing, and enterprise spaces. The companies said aspects of Ooyala’s technology will be integrated into the Brightcove platform to provide a more robust global offering for all customers.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2019. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Brandwatch launches Vizia Enterprise Reporting

Brandwatch has unveiled its latest Vizia innovation with an enterprise reporting product that it claims changes the approach to marketing reporting for the better.

Vizia Enterprise Reporting aims to deliver relevant pieces of intelligence to an inbox with the simple click of a mouse, saving time and money while embedding customer and marketing data across the enterprise. This new offering lets authors congregate a company’s most valuable reporting data – whether it be earned, owned, paid social, Google Analytics, SEO and more – to be shared across teams, departments and entire businesses.

“Through research and numerous client interviews we realised that the way information is shared across organisations is fundamentally flawed,” said vice-president of Vizia Products at Brandwatch, Michael Brackpool. "Hundreds of our customers – the biggest brands in the world – have been screaming at us to help reinvent how they report internally."

HubSpot integrates with LinkedIn Ads

HubSpot has confirmed LinkedIn ads are now available in the Professional and Enterprise tiers of Marketing Hub as part of the HubSpot Ads tool.

HubSpot Ads also includes integrations with Facebook and Google, giving customers the tools they need to manage their advertising efforts inside the HubSpot platform.

For example, once connected, customers can create targeting audiences off of any data point within the HubSpot CRM and easily sync them between HubSpot and LinkedIn; automatically sync, de-dupe and nurture any new leads from LinkedIn’s Lead Gen ads to the HubSpot CRM; and analyse how LinkedIn ad spend is influencing the company’s bottom line with true ROI reporting.

OpenSparkz completes second capital raising

OpenSparkz, a global platform aimed at removing the need for physical loyalty cards, offer codes and coupons, said its second capital raising has closed oversubscribed.

The latest seed raising of $1.5 million attracted new regional and local investors alongside further commitments from the founders and original backers. New investors include Louise Daley, the Singapore-based Deputy Chief Executive of Accor Hotels Asia Pacific.

OpenSparkz CEO, Terry McMullen, said he is excited about the level of interest shown by investors in the latest funding round.

OpenSparkz is considering a Series A capital raising round of up to US$5 million in the second half of 2019 to continue ramping up its geographic expansion, with a likely focus on making further inroads into Asia.

Tableau launches Prep Conductor and Ask Data

Data visualisation platform, Tableau Software, has confirmed general availability of Ask Data, a natural language processing capability that allows people to ask data questions in plain language and instantly get a visual response.

This patent pending capability aims to make it easier for people, regardless of skill set, to engage with data and produce analytical insights they can share with others without having to do any setup or programming.
For example, customers can simply type a question such as: 'What were my sales this month?', and Tableau will return an interactive visualisation that they can continue to explore without limits, either with iterations, new questions, or drag-and-drop gestures. Ask Data is available as part Tableau’s newest release, Tableau 2019.1. 

Tableau also announced general availability of Prep Conductor, a product that enables organisations to schedule and manage self-service data preparation at scale with no programming or complicated set up. Tableau Prep Conductor is part of a new subscription package called Tableau Data Management. 

Insightly extends CRM with new territory visualisation, analytics

Insightly, which offers a CRM for building customer relationships, has taken the wrappers off the latest version of its product featuring innovations in territory visualisation, pricing and quoting and analytics.

Insightly CRM offers enterprise-grade data visualisation and business intelligence, including territory visualisation, calculated fields, and custom validation.

Supporting these implementations requires adding core functionality that addresses new frequently requested use cases, out of the box. One such use case is for businesses to have the ability to price products and deliver quotes, directly from within the CRM during the opportunity management process.

InVision acquires Trunk 

InVision is welcoming the team behind Trunk, to its business to help expand the capabilities of its flagship product, Studio.

According to the company, the Trunk team will bring their expertise to help tackle some of the biggest workflow pain points and to help accelerate the Studio roadmap. In addition to versioning, their work with the team will help create a more seamless workflow between Studio and InVision Cloud.

“As every organisation in the world faces the challenge of maturing their design teams, workflows and infrastructure for better outcomes, more and more of the patterns common to the world of Engineering are becoming relevant to Design as well,” said InVision CEO and founder, Clark Valberg. "We’re excited about the innovative experiences the Trunk team will bring to the future of our platform, and the Design industry as whole."

Trunk will continue to be available to existing users and will wind down within the next six months as new solutions to versioning are rolled out in Studio.

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