CMO's top 8 martech stories for the week - 11 February 2021

LiveRamp to acquire DataFleets

Data connectivity platform, LiveRamp, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire DataFleets, a cloud data platform that enables data silos to be unified without moving data or compromising privacy.

This acquisition expands LiveRamp’s data protection capabilities to unlock greater data access and control for its customers. In addition, the deal opens up new use cases as well as new markets for distributed data collaboration through LiveRamp Safe Haven. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Thanks to this acquisition, LiveRamp said it will unlock data access by making proprietary data available for analytics without requiring the movement of data; enable identity resolution and collaboration workflows across distributed data sets without compromising privacy or security; allow global connectivity across data sets formerly siloed by infrastructures, industries and geographies; and provide continuous control over data while collaborating and having the ability to choose the right approach and level of data protection to meet business needs.

Tealium raises US$96 million in funding

Customer data platform (CDP) vendor, Tealium, has raised US$96 million in a Series G funding round, with existing investors Georgian and Silver Lake Waterman.

The latest investment injection brings a new valuation of US$1.2 billion to the customer data orchestration outfit and will further accelerate Tealium’s product development.

Tealium has positioned itself as the industry-standard data platform to enable companies from all over the world and across many industries to leverage data to produce deeper insights with a vendor-neutral offering more than 1300 solution integrations.

"Key factors in the market have come together and created an environment where organisations have to adopt a first-party data strategy to stay competitive and viable — and this trend is only increasing," said Tealium CEO, Jeff Lunsford. "This new capital will be invested in expanding our customer success, ecosystem development and product development teams around the world. We are committed to supporting our customers with high-touch industry expertise, from our team and our partners, and to delighting them with new products and services that make their jobs easier."

Leadspace chalks up US$46 million

Also gaining funding this week is fellow CDP outfit, Leadspace, which announced it has raised US$46 million in growth funding, led by JVP.

Leadspace uses an open B2B data engine combined with artificial intelligence (AI), a proprietary graph of B2B personas, and activations across the tech market. It is used by Microsoft, American Express, RingCentral for data-driven inbound marketing, outbound targeting and ABM efforts.

Magnite to acquire SpotX

In another acquisition move this week, Magnite, an independent sell-side advertising platform, will acquire CTV and video ad platform SpotX for US$1.17 billion.

Magnite and SpotX will create the largest independent CTV and video advertising platform in the programmatic marketplace. The combined company will provide better support for sellers, create an alternative to the CTV advertising market’s largest players, and greatly improve scale and efficiency for buyers.

Magnite’s expanded technical capabilities will be able to cater to a broader set of client needs and make it easier for brands and agencies to buy premium CTV inventory at scale with standard features and a single, addressable pool of audiences.

WordPress VIP ups analytics ante with Parse.ly

Content management platform provider, WordPress VIP, has acquired content analytics player, Parse.ly, to lift its reporting game.

WPVIP said Parse.ly augments its contents and analytics solutions and will bring real-time content analytics as well as personalised recommendation engine capabilities to its platform. Specifically, common workflows will move beyond page views and visits to showcase top performing content leading to purchases for ecommerce users, provide dynamic audience segmentation, and offer the ability to deliver content recommendations for top performing products.

The deal is the first large enterprise software acquisition by WPVIP and its parent company Automattic. Financial terms were not detailed.

WPVIP CEO, Nick Gernert, will lead the combined organisations, while Parse.ly founders, Sachin Kamdar and Andrew Montalenti, have joined to lead the go-to-market strategy for Parse.ly as well as product, respectively.

“Parse.ly has a remarkable team and product, as well as expertise serving an increasing number of content teams driving business growth. We're excited to leverage Parse.ly's analytics technology to make our agile content platform even more powerful for marketers," said Gernert.

WPVIP customers include Salesforce, NBA, Condé Nast, Facebook, and Microsoft.

Onclusive partners with Shareablee

Onclusive, the data science company for communications, and Shareablee, the social media analytics outfit, have struck a new partnership to combine solutions for earned, owned and social media insights.

The partnership will help companies gain more holistic data about the performance of their owned and earned content across global news outlets, influencers and social media platforms.

While social media, communications, public relations and marketing teams each have a view of a company’s brand, reputation, and influence, companies that are increasingly looking to measure their owned and earned media strategies in a more centralised way. This new partnership allows them to combine these functions within integrated teams and equipping them with comparable tools.

Scratchpad secures US$13 million

Scratchpad has announced a US$13 million Series A funding round, led by Craft Ventures with participation from Accel. The latest injection brings total funding to $16.6 million, including the $3.6 million seed round in October last year.

Scratchpad, which was founded in 2019, has created a workspace that sits on top of the Salesforce CRM to simplify and speed up the process of entering information into the database. As part of the latest investment, the company confirmed David Sacks, founding COO of PayPal, founder/CEO of Yammer and founder/general partner at Craft Ventures, will be joining its board of directors.

Iteratively raises US$5.4 million

Iteratively, a SaaS tool that helps data and product teams define, instrument and verify analytics tracking, has secured US$5.4 million in new capital.

The latest round was led by Google’s AI-focused venture fund, Gradient Ventures, with participation from Fika Ventures.

Iteratively strives to enforce a reliable source of truth for teams’ analytics and enables product managers, data analysts and engineers to collaborate on data. Its Web-based user interface for data analysts and product managers is designed to define and evolve data tracking plans in a collaborative way, and includes best-in-class developer tooling for engineers to more easily and accurately implement analytics tracking with type-safe, open-source SDKs, a CLI and CI/CD integration.

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