CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 12 December 2019

Acquia strikes deal to buy CDP

Open source digital content and experience platform vendor, Acquia, has struck a deal to acquire AgilOne, an enterprise customer data platform (CDP) provider.

Under the terms of the acquisition, AgilOne will be offered both as a standalone CDP offering as well as part of Acquia's Open Marketing Cloud. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

Acquia said AgilOne brings with it the ability to tap customer data and artificial intelligence (AI) to understand, acquire, and engage with customers while providing a platform to create a single view of the customer.

“Marketers are demanding more flexibility and control over the tools they use for the customer experience. Unfortunately, many of these legacy tools are costly, lack real-time interactions and modern APIs, and lock data into silos where it’s inaccessible to other applications,”said Acquia co-founder, CTO and chairman, Dries Buytaert.

“Built on open source technology, AgilOne and Acquia together will bring in data from any third-party system via open APIs, making it much easier for marketers to gain this single view of the customer and deliver better, more relevant customer experiences and analytics across every channel.”

Acquia said teams can bring their own machine learning models, choose from AgilOne’ pre-built models to automate segmentation efforts, or configure business-specific customisation into their pre-built models, which are then accessible across the entire platform. The company highlighted the machine learning capabilities as being of key appeal in the deal.

Adobe acquires Oculus Medium

Adobe has acquired Oculus Medium, the 3D virtual reality (VR) sculpting tool. Medium launched alongside the original Oculus Touch controllers in December 2016 and since then has been used for a range of creative outlets including games developers, indie VR developers, feature film concept artists, VFX artists and makers.

In a blog post, Adobe's VP of 3D and immersive, Sebastien Deguy, said he was thrilled to announce the acquisition as a firm stamp towards lifting the vendor's 3D efforts. Financial terms have not been disclosed. 

"Medium has been a beacon of creativity in the VR space, pushing creative and technical boundaries of 3D modeling. The creative tool enables users to sculpt, model and paint in an immersive environment – to easily create characters, objects, environments, expressive works of art and more," Deguy stated. "The integration of Medium’s tools and technology will greatly contribute to our 3D and immersive strategy."

Ogury raises US$50 million

Marketing privacy outfit, Ogury has raised US$50 million, enabling the company to accelerate its product innovation and customer growth in the US and other key markets in Europe and APAC. Offering GDPR-compliant and CCPA-prepared tools, Ogury wants to lead the advertising market from data-driven to consumer-choice first when it comes to data privacy.

Ogury has created a marketing engine driven by user choice, which has been uniquely designed to address three key elements: First-party, informed and traceable user consent; Unique and legitimately actionable insights on consumers and their mobile journey; Brand-safe and fraud-free activation of data and media. 

Canva releases raft of product launches 

Canva is to release a suite of major product launches and includes new Canva Apps and Canva Video. 

Canva Apps will be a curated collection of third-party integrations and extensions designed to create add-ons to Canva. It offers people the ability to streamline workflows with access to additional content, editing and publishing tools, either created themselves or by familiar brands such as Google Drive, Dropbox, PhotoMosh and Instagram. 

Canva Video is an online video editing tool to create professional looking videos with simple templates and an easy user experience. Canva has also partnered with royalty-free music Epidemic Sound to offer its full catalogue of 30,000+ audio tracks for use in Canva Videos for only US$3 per track licence.

Broadsign and Adform streamline global programmatic omnichannel media buys 

New ad tech integration gives brands and agencies a one-stop shop for planning and executing global programmatic campaigns across online, mobile and digital-out-of-home

Broadsign, digital out-of-home (DOOH) marketing platform, and integrated advertising technology company, Adform, have joined forces to integrate the Broadsign Reach programmatic supply-side platform (SSP) with Adform’s demand-side platform (DSP). Digital buyers can now tap into Adform’s targeting and retargeting capabilities to reach desired audiences around the world using online, mobile and digital-out-of-home channels.

The integration gives media buyers access to 50,000 roadside, transit, retail and place-based digital screens located throughout the world via Adform. Using the combined platforms, brands and agencies can now leverage their own data through Adform’s integrated advertising platform (IAP) to inform purchasing strategies across omnichannel campaigns based on real-time conditions.  

Zendesk Talk Partner Edition expands Amazon Connect support

Zendesk has announced enhanced integration between Amazon Connect and Zendesk Talk Partner Edition, allowing both Amazon Connect and Zendesk Support customers to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to improve contact centre agent efficiency and reduce the time customers spend interacting with customer service. 

This is the latest integration between Zendesk and AWS and follows the Zendesk Events Connector for Amazon EventBridge integration announced earlier in the year. These connectors are part of a larger effort for Zendesk’s open and flexible CRM platform, Sunshine, to enable companies to free customer data and allow developers to build out functionality on open standards with AWS at its core.

The enhanced Zendesk connector for Amazon Connect will be available as a pre-integrated solution starting in late January 2020.

Pitney Bowes software and data now available in AWS Data Exchange

In other news related to AWS, Pitney Bowes Software and Data, part of Syncsort, is now available in AWS Data Exchange, allowing customers to securely find, subscribe to, and use third-party data in the cloud.

Datasets in the initial AWS offering include, but are not limited to, World Points of Interest, World Demographics, and World Streets. The available data products support location-based analysis in industries including insurance, telco, real estate and location-based marketing and advertising. 

Specifically, data subscribers can better target location that is within, adjunct to or in proximity to an address in order to undertake a range of intelligence gathering activities. These include managing and analysing risk by accurately locating incidents and identifying geographic relationships; refining sales and marketing activities; and identifying revenue-generating opportunities by analysing aggregated purchasing patterns and demographics to better understand buyers and how to connect data across physical and digital channels.

LiveRamp launches Privacy Manager

Identity platform, LiveRamp, has launched Privacy Manager in the US, a configurable consent management platform. An Australian launch date has not been set at this time.

Privacy Manager enables marketers and publishers to interact with consumers and manage their data in a secure, compliant manner, while offering transparency, notice and choice.

Privacy Manager is engineered to integrate across websites and mobile apps and provides a full audit trail that delivers compliance and better customer experiences across channels. It's designed to help individuals receive transparency and control over their data, and help publishers command higher CPMs using data with permission.

In addition, Privacy Manager for GDPR and CCPA compliance provides both purpose-level and vendor-level choices to ensure informed decision making. Privacy Manager’s interface is easy to use and loads quickly, helping to create a positive user privacy experience while providing the means for education on how and why data is used, and its built-in tag management capabilities enable full control over on-site partners and vendors.

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