The MarTech Minute: Watson spinoff gets a new name, Gartner’s predictions for AI

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. Centerbridge Partners reveals name for IBM Watson-spinoff. The new entity, Acoustic, was announced weeks after the launch of the new marketing cloud company, which promises to […]

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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.

Centerbridge Partners reveals name for IBM Watson-spinoff. The new entity, Acoustic, was announced weeks after the launch of the new marketing cloud company, which promises to maintain its focus on serving marketers exclusively. “Acoustic is filling a major void in the industry as a true platform that’s entirely devoted to the marketer,” said Mark Simpson, chief executive officer of Acoustic. “As an independent company, our goal is to bring back a personal approach to the art of marketing by investing in products that work together across the entire marketing ecosystem to help enhance creativity and truly move people.”

Amperity raises $50M in latest funding series. The AI-driven customer data management platform announced that it has raised $50 million from Tiger Global Management and Goldman Sachs, among a number of other investors, in its Series C funding round. Amperity plans to use the funding to expand into new industry verticals including financial services, automotive, insurance and healthcare.

Blackstone to acquire Vungle. Performance marketing platform Vungle will be acquired by private equity firm Blackstone. The platform, which specializes in in-app advertisements on mobile devices, is used by over 60,000 mobile apps around the world and serves over 4 billion monthly video views. “We are extremely excited about our new partnership with Blackstone,” said Vungle CEO Rick Tallman. “Blackstone’s acquisition will further accelerate Vungle’s mission to be the trusted guide for growth and engagement, transforming how users discover and experience mobile apps.”

Gartner predicts AI projects will double over the next year. According to its recent survey, Gartner sees improved customer experience and task automation as the key drivers in the growth of AI-related projects. “We see a substantial acceleration in AI adoption this year,” said Jim Hare, research vice president at Gartner. “The rising number of AI projects means that organizations may need to reorganize internally to make sure that AI projects are properly staffed and funded. It is a best practice to establish an AI Center of Excellence to distribute skills, obtain funding, set priorities and share best practices in the best possible way.” 

Digital experience analytics platform Blue Triangle launches new Salesforce integration. The certified integration will let clients deploy Blue Triangle to identify and resolve website issues impacting revenue. “We are proud to be the first digital experience analytics platform to be partnering with Salesforce Commerce Cloud,” shared Lance Ullom, CEO of Blue Triangle. 

NinthDecimal’s new multi-touch attribution tool measures foot traffic. The new attribution tool is part of an update to the company’s measurement product which measures location conversions. “We work with NinthDecimal as our measurement partner and they have helped us change how we measure our business,” said Mark Henry, Manager, Brand and Communications at Shell. “These new enhancements, particularly adopting an MTA approach to foot traffic, give us unprecedented visibility into real business metrics to help us grow our brand and serve our customers.”

3dcart launches B2B ecommerce platform. The new solution is intended to serve as an ecommerce platform to help connect manufacturers, wholesalers and other B2B merchants that manage large orders digitally. “We wanted to create a focused B2B ecommerce plan for businesses with the specific needs of B2B merchants, bringing together as much functionality as possible while keeping the pricing low,” said Gonzalo Gil, 3dcart CEO, “We’ve taken all our specialized B2B apps and rolled them directly into the plan. Thanks to our valued partnerships, we’ve also been able to include connector apps to speed up integration between the merchant’s website and our partners’ services.”

AI data platform Near raises $100 million. The latest funding round from private equity firm Great Pacific Capital brings the platform’s total fundraising to $134 million. The platform analyzes behavioral data from over 1.6 billion users. “Near provides insights into human behavior by analyzing where people are, and combining that with a multitude of data points to predict and influence behavior,” said Great Pacific Capital CEO Ketan Patel, “Given it does this across the globe in a privacy-protected manner, it is well-positioned to create an exciting new space that delivers value to both people, and those that wish to build relationships with them.”

Groove and Highspot release new integration. Highspot, a sales enablement platform, and Groove, a sales engagement tool have announced a new integration that aims to improve relationships between customer success and sales teams and their clients and prospects.  “Purchase decisions often come down to customer experience,” said Jon White, Vice President of Product at Highspot, “The combination of sales enablement and sales engagement helps salespeople uplift their conversations with buyers, which not only drives revenue, but builds lasting relationships.”

FreeWheel and Centro partner up. The partnership brings together Centro’s platform for buying digital media, called Basis, with FreeWheel’s platform for ad agencies. “This integration will allow any Centro client who uses the Strata platform to automate the final stage of the campaign lifecycle: billing actualization and reconciliation. This will make the work of media professionals much easier and more valuable,” said Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro, “Campaign teams using Centro will no longer have to log into third-party systems, find campaign data, download massive spreadsheet reports, re-format data, and then send the data to finance teams. The integrated Basis and Strata platforms will execute these tasks automatically. It brings significant operational value to our shared client bases.”

Marketers on the move

Market researcher Jonathan Stinnett has been named president of consumer technology, media and entertainment at global insights partner Maru/Matchbox. “[Stinnett’s] track record in using customer insight to develop compelling products, services and experiences will be invaluable in helping our clients,” said Ged Parton, CEO of Maru Group. Prior to accepting his new role, Stinnett served as director of research and insights at Citi and most recently at C Space where he was VP and managing director of the New York office.

Kenshoo has announced the appointment of Sandy Shanman as its chief revenue officer and the promotion of Jason Pratt to managing director, North America. “Sandy’s reputation for exceeding growth objectives, focus on domain expertise and extensive network of contacts will have an immediate impact on our global sales efforts and continue to help drive client success on Kenshoo,” said Yoav Izhar-Prato, CEO and co-founder of Kenshoo. “Likewise, given Jason’s tenure at Kenshoo and his wide-ranging knowledge of the digital marketing landscape, he is the perfect fit to oversee Kenshoo’s ongoing expansion efforts in the U.S. and Canada.”

In line with the Umibo’s plans to grow its OOH initiatives. Norm Chait has been appointed as head of practices for OOH solutions. Norm most recently served as senior vice president and director of OOH and local investment at Spark Foundry, in sales and marketing consultancies at Vector Media and Screenvision Media.

Cynthia Gumbert has been appointed SmartBear’s chief marketing officer. “Strengthening our team allows us to keep expanding our product portfolio, build awareness, and meet growing global demand for our company’s products,” said Justin Teague, CEO of SmartBear. “Cynthia’s experience in marketing leadership at some of the most successful fast growth startups as well as top technology brands makes her the ideal person to lead the marketing organization.”

Are you ready to make your own move in martech? We’ve gathered a few job postings to help with your search.

Vice President, Digital Marketing – McKesson | Dallas, TX

Director, Marketing Operations and Insights – VTS, Inc. | New York, NY

Group Director, Marketing Data and Technology – Omnicom Media Group | Chicago, IL

Director, Digital Marketing Technologies and Platforms – Sutter Health | San Francisco, CA

Director, Marketing Technology, Consumer Markets – PwC | Boston, MA


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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