The MarTech Minute: IBM seals $34B Red Hat deal, Facebook’s new deep learning model

The martech week in review: News and announcements in marketing technology this week that you might have missed.

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MarTech Minute briefs always appear first in our daily newsletter throughout the week. Click here to subscribe. The following is our compilation of the past week’s briefs from those newsletters.

Cognitiv adds incremental lift tool to suite of solutions. The new product runs on several neural networks simultaneously to help digital marketers predict whether impressions will result in conversions as well as identifying incremental conversions. “For brands that want to drive truly new, incremental customers, Cognitiv Incremental gives them an undeniable competitive edge,” said Cognitiv co-founder and CEO Jeremy Fain. 

Sales & Orders releases new Shopify app for merchants. The ecommerce platform’s new app will allow users to create product feeds and manage their ad campaigns across different channels including Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, Facebook and Instagram Dynamic Products Ads. “Shopify merchants need a seamless, end-to-end solution that will allow them to grow and succeed across today’s major retail marketing channels,” said Sales & Orders Co-Founder Gregg Hanan. 

Contentsquare scoops up Clicktale. Digital experience insights platform Contentsquare acquired Clicktale, an Israel-based experience analytics company. This follows Contentsquare’s acquisition of Pricing Assistant, a pricing optimization and merchandising solution, just a week ago. Contentsquare said its combination with Clicktale will give ecommerce and digital teams an understanding of customer behavior on apps and websites.

New research indicates consumer frustrations with AI. The May 2019 survey, conducted by Invoca, polled over 2,000 U.S. adult consumers on their feelings towards AI. It found that brands that only offer automated customer support frustrated 52% of consumers, and left nearly one in five surveyed feeling angry following their interaction. For digital marketers wanting to leverage AI for customer-facing touchpoints, Invoca recommends making sure that your company’s phone number is prominently displayed throughout the interface for customers to call.

Pixability launches audience targeting, optimization solution. The video advertising company announced the launch of PixabilityONE, an all-in-one tool that will allow marketers, advertisers and agencies to manage global video ad campaigns from a unified interface. “One of the biggest challenges brands and agencies face today is the siloed management of video campaigns across the most important video platforms, resulting in missed opportunities and a failure to optimize,” commented David George, CEO of Pixability. 

IBM seals $34B Red Hat acquisition. The addition of open-source software creator, Red Hat, is IBM’s biggest acquisition to-date and is one of the largest tech deals in U.S. tech history. Red Hat will move under IBM’s hybrid cloud business unit and promises to help IBM bring in new customers as business’s transition from on-premises to public or private cloud services.

Signpost raises $52M in late-stage financing. The cloud platform, which grew by 43% year-over-year, primarily serves small businesses and is expected to leverage the furthered investment to scale to more local businesses. “HighBar’s investment is a vote of confidence in the right approach to applying technology to level the playing field for local businesses,” said Brian Peters, Managing Director at HighBar Partners, who will join Signpost’s Board of Directors. “The turnkey setup and level of automation in Signpost’s platform, as well as their ability to follow through on reviews and engage the modern customer well beyond their first interaction is what really sets them apart. When we consider the strength of the team, their focus on execution, and the magnitude of the market opportunity that sits before them, we couldn’t be more excited to partner with Signpost.”

Bowfin acquired by Rightpoint, expanding Salesforce footprint. The acquisition brings together the two companies who have partnered together over the past five years, seeking to help customers’ in their digital transformations. Bowfin brings a team of experienced Salesforce administrators who have specialized in solutions from Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Field Service, Marketing Cloud, Heroku, Community Cloud and Einstein. “We are excited to have Bowfin’s team join Rightpoint as their capabilities and culture are a natural fit. Rightpoint is working with our clients’ Salesforce environments across the digital marketing, digital product development and modern workplace solutions we already offer. Adding Salesforce capabilities is a logical extension,” said Micah Swigert, senior vice president of technology at Rightpoint.

Facebook launches open source release of Deep Learning Recommendation Model. With the release of the new model, Facebook hopes to drive continued algorithm advancements and modeling to create efficient systems to serve relevant content to Facebook users. The implementation can serve as a benchmark for marketers to measure the speed at which the model performs and how different techniques used affect accuracy.
 
Formstack finalizes acquisition of InsureSign. The software-as-a-service vendor, which allows marketers to create forms to collect data has acquired e-signature provider InsureSign. “Formstack helps users capture data and put it to work, and we know users are increasingly looking to end-to-end, do-it-all platforms to power their workflows,” said Chris Byers, CEO of Formstack. “This acquisition will allow our users to capture data, manage it, create documents and secure signatures electronically without needing to leave the application or cobble together integrations.”

Marketing intelligence firm TapClicks acquires iSpionage. The acquisition follows a number of other analytics and marketing intelligence platform acquisitions by TapClicks and seeks to provide digital marketers with better marketing intelligence through analytics and reporting. “Marketers are looking for better ways to gain competitive intelligence, and iSpionage offers a groundbreaking approach,” said Babak Hedayati, CEO of TapClicks. “TapClicks’ vision …is for a completely unified platform where data integration between solutions is seamless and ease-of-use is paramount.”

Cision launches new communications platform. The new platform will deliver media monitoring and analytics to communications professionals, as well as paid audience targeting and influencer campaigns. “This is an exciting time for Cision as we continue to evolve after our recent acquisitions,” said Kevin Akeroyd, Cision CEO. “By taking the very best elements from across our product portfolio, we’ve created an inclusive earned media management platform that sets us apart from anything else in the market.” 

Survey indicates consumers are sharing less. The survey, produced by security firm FigLeaf, revealed that online users polled in the U.S. and UK are changing their online behavior in response to reports of increased data hacks. “Without question, consumers are telling us that online privacy is important to them. However, far too many believe online privacy is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve,” said Slava Kolomeichuk, CEO and co-founder of FigLeaf. “This attitude is resulting in individuals who are choosing to restrict their own online activity, which limits their personal freedom. Unfortunately, current tools do not give consumers the assurance they need that it is possible to control one’s own online privacy.”

Beanstalk Digital launches AI-driven analytics. The new solution, Beanstalk Predictive, is expected to deliver better, real-time insights through the new platform from AI-driven marketing and audience intelligence. “We are excited to partner with UK-based Buzz Radar as their exclusive, strategic provider for North America to generate actionable and useful information that will completely change the game for our client-partners,” stated Beanstalk Digital’s chief strategy officer Matt Murphy.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Jennifer Cannon
Contributor
Jennifer Videtta Cannon is a markerting specialist at ShotFlow. She previously was a Senior Editor at MarTech. Jennifer has more than a decade of organizational digital marketing experience. She has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.

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