marketing automation

Fluency plans to invest its new funding into AI and engineering to bring more automation into the platform.

There’s a paradox at play in how marketers are adopting artificial intelligence.

Eighty-seven percent of US advertisers say they plan to increase AI usage over the next 12 months. But only 45% feel confident in their understanding of how AI-powered technologies work. That 42-point gap is an indicator of early friction in AI adoption.

As the digital advertising industry enters a new phase of maturity, so does its relationship with data. Going into 2026, marketers’ long-standing obsession with scale is giving way to something more grounded: a push for smarter, actionable, owned data.

When used strategically, AI can produce content on par with the quality of marketers’ work. What does that mean for the job market?

Marketers didn’t sign up to be spreadsheet jockeys or calendar coordinators; they came to craft stories, shape brands and drive growth. But in reality, campaign deployments have become code for chaos: fighting fires, fulfilling last-minute requests and executing the same plays under slightly different subject lines.

Marketing has evolved dramatically – from one-size-fits-all tactics to today’s hyper-personalized, data-driven strategies. But now we’re reaching another inflection point. For years, marketing teams have invested in turning data into insights. Yet a persistent problem remains: The path from insight to action remains too long and fragmented.

As we lean heavily on AI tools to enhance content efficiency, we may have reached a tipping point where we are creating more content in service of media algorithms, rather than for the benefit of consumers and brands.

AI has many business applications, from automating manual processes and monitoring data in real time to targeting customers more accurately. And industry players are increasingly using AI in their day-to-day work.

RevJet wants to be an operating system for the customer experience, and it’s using a $21 million Series A round to get there. Total funding for the four-year-old startup, which helps marketers manage, test and optimize their digital advertising across touchpoints, is now $30 million. The round, revealed Wednesday, was led by private equity firm […]

Leanplum is leaning into machine learning and mobile marketing automation with $47 million in Series D funding, announced Wednesday. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with pinch-hitting from existing investors, including Canaan Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Shasta Ventures, and brings the company’s total funding to just over $93 million since […]

Facebook may be sidling away from ad tech, but it’s cozying up to marketing automation through a smorgasbord of APIs. At its F8 developer’s conference in San Jose this week, Facebook rolled out the next version of its marketing API suite, which includes new tools to automate creative production and targeting parameters. Those APIs make […]

Apps are looking for marketing cloud-like capabilities. But they’re not going, or can’t afford, to spend the kind of money marketers have historically dropped on a traditional marketing cloud integration. Leanplum, which on Tuesday announced its $29 million Series C led by Canaan Partners with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Shasta Ventures, is positioning itself […]

While “programmatic technology” has come a long way, many longtime players in the space are now reckoning with the term. AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley penned op eds about the “death of programmatic.” Rubicon Project SVP of market development Jay Sears also has acknowledged the limitations of the terminology. AdExchanger reached out to ad tech executives, some […]

Mobile marketing automation platform Appboy is on a quest to steal some market share from the CRM incumbents with $20 million in Series C financing led by Battery Ventures. The round, announced Wednesday, brings the New York City-based company’s total funding to $45.5 million since 2011. Appboy plans to use the cash to keep on […]

Marketing services and tech M&A activity in the first quarter of 2016 resulted in 187 transactions that generated $8.1 billion of deal value, according to JEGI’s Q1 2016 M&A overview report, released on Friday. More than half of the deal value in marketing services and tech came from the data and analytics subsector ($4.3 billion […]

Kahuna, a mobile marketing automation startup going against Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce.com, revealed Wednesday it had raised $45 million in Series B funding. The round, led by Tenaya Capital, Sequoia and SoftTech, will be used for product development and to expand Kahuna’s team of 80. Kahuna’s clients like Dollar Shave Club, Overstock.com, The Weather Channel […]

Publishers Clearing House (PCH) and Liquid, its digital advertising arm, are on an ad tech tear. Less than a year after buying mobile programmatic company Plethora in December, PCH has snapped up marketing automation company CommandIQ. Liquid, then called Liquid Wireless, was itself acquired by PCH in 2012 as part of Publishers Clearing House’s efforts […]

Mobile-first doesn’t mean mobile-only. That’s the thinking at mobile marketing automation company Leanplum. “You want to design a journey for customers that they find useful,” said Momchil Kyurkchiev, CEO and co-founder of Leanplum. The company announced $11.6 million in Series B on Wednesday, led by Kleiner Perkins and with participation from Shasta Ventures, bringing the company’s […]

Marketing automation, long defined as a B2B lead-gen system, is making its way into B2C territory. One of the most common complaints about standard marketing automation systems is that they’re simply too old or unable to sync data in real-time. But Salesforce.com’s Pardot and Marketo are all updating to compete effectively in a cross-channel media environment. […]

There’s nothing more cliché in the ad world than the phrase “right message, right time.” But as the cross-device game heats up, it’s a platitude that’s gaining a new lease on life. Kahuna, a Sequoia Capital-backed mobile marketing startup which raised $11 million in Series A funding in February, aims to tackle the cross-device messaging […]

HubSpot, an independent, Boston-based tech company that built one of the first all-inclusive marketing and sales platforms (at least for the mid-market), began its first day of trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, its share price rising to $33 in early trading. HubSpot – or HUBS, per its new ticker – was valued at close to $759 […]

While marketing clouds push the promise of technological integration, the fact that every major cloud was built through acquisition means it’s fair to question the extent to which the components are truly unified. Getting applications within a cloud to communicate is ultimately an iterative process and Oracle, on Tuesday, unveiled its latest development within its […]

LinkedIn will buy Bizo, a B2B display ad platform, for $175 million in cash and stock, the companies said Tuesday. “It’s exciting for us to bring Bizo’s expertise and technology into our ecosystem,” said Deep Nishar, LinkedIn’s SVP of product and user experience, in a statement. “Our ability to integrate their B2B solutions with our content marketing […]

The proliferation of customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and marketing automation platforms has allowed business-to-business (B2B) marketers to focus higher up the sales funnel and seek out vendors to automate lead gathering. At the same time, the growth of social media has provided a wealth of data on potential customers. It’s led some marketers to […]

When IBM acquired email and marketing automation platform Silverpop, industry watchers wondered if this meant IBM, too, was building its own marketing cloud. What integration plans did IBM have for Silverpop? What technological gap, specifically, did the acquired company fill? Bill Nussey, Silverpop’s president and CEO, who has since joined IBM, spoke with AdExchanger at the […]

IBM will acquire email and marketing automation vendor Silverpop, the companies said Thursday. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but a story last month in the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported the value of a rumored acquisition at $270 million. IBM, like Adobe and Oracle, has remained steady on the acquisitions front. “They got massive marketing […]

Marketing automation platform Silverpop’s recent push into revenue analytics for B2B marketers culminated Tuesday in the launch of Marketing Automation for Ecommerce. The product addresses a multitude of B2C needs, at the core of which is the ability to tie email to revenue. The problem with attributing email to purchase activity is that a customer […]

Enterprise technology providers like Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce.com have engaged over the last four years in a marketing cloud arms race, snapping up point solutions at breakneck speed. Consider that from 2010 to 2013, tech giants cumulatively spent close to $30 billion acquiring marketing solutions. The press releases announcing each of these acquisitions tend to […]

Bizo, a maker of B2B digital media and marketing solutions, is betting on the growing importance of paid media to marketing tech. After citing Q4 gross revenue of $12.4 million and a $50 million annual run rate with media costs that average in the 35-40% range, Bizo’s CEO Russ Glass said Bizo for Marketing Automation, […]

Marketo posted strong Q3 earnings last quarter, recording revenue of $25.5 million – a 65% increase year-over-year. The company remains independent today, despite a spate of marketing automation acquisitions in recent years: Teradata bought Aprimo, ExactTarget bought Pardot, Oracle bought Eloqua and Adobe bought Neolane. Many analysts predicted Oracle’s rival Salesforce.com would purchase Marketo, but […]