The MarTech Minute: Qualtrics launches CoreXM, Liiv buys Telmar and Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey

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.

A new product name and new features from Qualtrics. The customer experience platform Qualtrics has launched CoreXM, a reiteration of its previous Research Core platform with added capabilities. Existing Research Core customers will be automatically transitioned to the new tool that has all the previous abilities, along with newly added analytics, reviews, XM controls and an XM directory. There is also a refreshed user interface with a new homepage and improved navigation to easily access XM templates, solutions and dashboards. 

LiiV acquisition brings new media insights to Splashlight. LiiV, the holding company for Splashlight, has acquired the media insights company Telmar. Splashlight, which offers content creation services for ecommerce brands, will now include the added benefits of Telmar’s media insights. “Telmar is another critical part of the creative intelligence roadmap. Their mastery of varied streams of audience data is key to unlocking commercial and creative success for over 700 clients, and a new generation of marketers,” said LiiV founder James Ingram. 

Adjust expands ad measurement capabilities. Adjust, a mobile ad measurement and fraud protection solution, has acquired the ad measurement tool for smartphone apps called F.O.X. from the Japan-based marketing agency CyberZ. The company said the acquisition marks a milestone for its business in Japan, one of its best-performing regions. “There are a lot of clear synergies between our two companies, and CyberZ’s international outlook and commitment to innovation makes it a natural fit for us. Together, we will work towards making marketing simpler, smarter and more secure for our clients,” wrote Adjust CEO Christian Henschel on the company’s blog. According to Henschel, F.O.X. was the first in-app ad tracking and measurement tool developed in Japan, and is a Facebook’s Mobile Measurement partner and official Twitter partner. 

MiQ rolls out new analytics products. Marketing intelligence platform MiQ has released a new suite of analytics products under the name Measure. The company said its new analytics offering is designed to close the loop between analytics and activation via “unbiased and streamlined” incremental testing. “With Measure, MiQ can build custom algorithms that plug into demand-side platforms to allow clients to be more targeted and effective with bidding and optimization, ensuring programmatic execution is effectively delivered and in line with business objectives,” reports MiQ. 

Bidstack comes to the U.S. Bidstack, a London-based in-game ad tech platform, is launching services in the U.S., with Adam Fisher, head of U.S. sales in New York and John Koronaios, VP of publisher relations in San Francisco. “With the U.S. being the biggest gaming market in the world … launching here has been on our roadmap since day one. Following our recent trading agreements with several DSPs, including The Trade Desk, Xandr Invest’s buy-side technology platform and our new partnership with Dentsu, now is the right time to make that move,” said Bidstack CEO James Draper. The company’s platform allows advertisers to place OOH ads in sporting venues, such as football pitch-side hoardings, racing track banners and open world billboards in video games.

Kubient launches real-time bidding solution. Kubient The digital marketing platform Kubient has launched oRTB, a real-time programmatic bidding solution for DOOH ads. The company says its new RTB solution is designed to give advertisers access to a marketplace where they can dynamically trade, distribute and execute omnichannel audience targeting. “We saw a need in the market for a transparent, open platform to buy and sell DOOH inventory in real-time,” said Kubient Chief Digital Officer Chris Andrews, “Now, brands that want to reach consumers at high foot-trafficked venues can leverage our integrated full-stack audience platform to reach, optimize and connect with their audiences … in addition to retargeting them throughout the day across all digital channels.”

Zendesk Inc. new customer support forums. Zendesk, a cloud-based CRM platform, has launched a collection of customer forums called Gather. The online communities will allow companies to provide transparent support to customers through online community forums. Gather creates a space where customers can engage with other customers, as well as company experts, to offer guidance and insight beyond what a single customer support agent might be able to handle. “Customers expect relevant and real-time support, which can be challenging to provide at scale,” said Shawna Wolverton, senior vice president, product at Zendesk. “Gather is a way to leverage customer and product experts to provide service representing a wide variety of viewpoints. It’s a place for companies to capture, organize, and share feedback for teams across support, product, engineering, and more. Using a community tool to listen to customers will improve relationships and ultimately their experiences.”

Collaboration platform provider Box shows off enhancements. Box is updating its platform and expanding its integration capabilities. The key changes include Box Shield and Box Relay, along with upgrades to its integrations with industry-leading vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and Adobe. In addition to the integrations with these tech players, Box has extended its relationship with IBM and expanded capabilities for data protection, governance, and compliance in the enterprise. With Microsoft, it has announced new integrations into Microsoft Teams. And with Adobe, it announced plans to, “Deeply integrate a full-featured Acrobat web experience, including powerful capabilities to modify, organize, sign, and collaborate on PDFs directly in Box.”

Indicators

Gartner CMO Spend Survey: Martech investments drop

Gartner surveyed more than 400 marketers involved with planning their company’s marketing budgets and found the amount of money being allocated to martech has dropped since last year, from 29% to 26%. “We’ve seen martech spend yo-yo over the years, indicating that this is a much more volatile investment area than agency investments,” reports Gartner, “In some respects, this reflects an inevitable cycle where once-new and shiny technology is acquired and costs are front-loaded, only to then settle in ongoing management costs over the technology’s remaining years within an organization.”

According to Gartner, the drop in martech investments may also be a result of the CMO’s inability to manage martech stacks. Pulling data from their 2019 Marketing Organization survey, Gartner discovered marketing technology strategy, adoption and use was one of the top three weaknesses in terms of driving customer acquisition or loyalty. Ironically, a fourth of the respondents from that survey accounted for their company’s weakness in martech strategy on insufficient budget, resources or capabilities.

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Marketers on the Move

The customer data management platform Validity has named Mike Piispanen COO and added new global business development and strategic partnership responsibilities to Derek Swaim’s role as the company’s executive VP of corporate development. The two will be focused on expansion initiatives and oversee Validity’s data management strategies, sales productivity and email marketing optimization. “I’m so pleased to welcome Mike onboard,” said Validity CEO Mark Briggs, “Further, I’m thrilled with the leadership Derek continues to provide as he brings innovation and creativity to our partnerships and welcomes new companies into the Validity family.” Prior to joining Validity, Piispanen served as the global head of the public relations and digital media verticals for Nasdaq. 

Maria Pergolino has been hired as the new CMO of ActiveCampaign, a customer experience automation platform. Pergolino is the company’s first CMO and will work out of ActiveCampaign’s Chicago headquarters. Along with Pergolino’s CMO appointment, ActiveCampaign has named Chris Englund VP of International Operations. “It underscores the growing momentum of ActiveCampaign that talent such as Maria Pergolino and Chris Englund, whose phenomenal track records created several major players in the martech space, would make ActiveCampaign their next step,” said ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom, “We’re excited to welcome them to ActiveCampaign and to Chicago.” Prior to joining ActiveCampaign, Pergolino was the CMO at Anaplan. Englund joins the company from HubSpot. 

TIBCO Software, an integration, API management and analytics platform, has appointed Fred Studer as CMO. He will oversee the company’s worldwide marketing efforts that are driven by TIBCO’s mission: “To connect any application, device or data source; unify all data for better access, trust, and control; and augment intelligence with data-driven insights.” Prior to joining TIBCO, Studer served as the CMO for FinancialForce and held roles at NetSuite and Microsoft. “I could not be more excited to join this team and company to do my best work ever,” said Studer.