The Martech Minute: Pause Ads from Xandr, Sisense funding news and Amobee’s new CEO

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.

Pepperjam adds attribution capabilities with Measured integration. Affiliate marketing technology provider Pepperjam has added the attribution platform Measured as its newest integrated technology partner. The partnership allows Pepperjam customers to push their affiliate marketing data directly into their reporting dashboards, making it possible to view their digital results side-by-side and giving them more insight when deciding how to allocate their affiliate ad spend. “Measured’s incrementality measurement is made turnkey with Pepperjam and will bring confidence to marketers regarding their affiliate investment,” said Measured CEO Trevor Testwuide.

AT&T ad company Xandr launches new ad units. Xandr, AT&T’s advertising company, has launched Pause Ads, a dynamic ad unit that aims to deliver a better user experience across traditional and connected TV channels. The ads are designed to complement the viewing experience by leveraging the native functionality of the pause button — the ads only are shown when a viewer takes a break from the content they’re watching. “When we conducted research for Xandr’s Relevance Report, we found that 73% of consumers surveyed dislike ads that interrupt what they’re doing; therefore, Pause Ads are very much about the right message at the right time,” said Xandr SVP Matt Van Houten. The ads are currently only available to a limited list of beta users and are enabled within live, video-on-demand and DVR programming on cable, broadcast and premium networks for both digital and satellite.

Sisense wins more than $100 million. The data analytics platform Sisense announced it has raised more than $100 million in its latest round of funding, bringing the company’s valuation to more than $1 billion. The funding was led by Insight Venture Partners with help from Access Industries, Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, DFJ Growth and others. “Given our investments in market-leading companies across diverse industries, we realize the value in analytics and machine learning and we could not be more excited about Sisense’s trajectory and traction in the market,” said Access Industries lead Daniel Shinar. The company says the funding will go towards bolstering its sales, marketing and development efforts.

Mimecast acquires Segasec. Email security firm Mimecast Limited has acquired Segasec, a firm that provides digital threat protection, Mimecast announced on Monday. The deal will allow Mimecast users to “take a proactive approach to identifying — and even potentially preventing — attacks that imitate their brands using domains they don’t own,” says Peter Bauer, chief executive officer at Mimecast.

Accenture expands SAP capabilities with maihiro acquisition. Accenture announced that it has entered an agreement to purchase SAP Gold Partner maihiro to strengthen Accenture’s SAP expertise. The news follows last year’s announcement from Accenture and SAP that they are co-developing and co-innovating to accelerate development of the SAP C/4Hana platform. “Today’s brands compete in the experience economy. Only those capable of delivering the most engaging and differentiated experiences will continue to win and retain customers’ loyalty,” said Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive, Accenture Technology Services. “With this acquisition, we will amplify our experience and knowledge to help clients drive growth by developing and deploying superior experience management. This will enable clients to better understand their customers, evolve business processes to align with customer needs, and enjoy higher customer retention and purchase frequency.”

Astute Business Solutions launches “zero cost” PeopleSoft Migration to Oracle Cloud. Astute, a provider of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Analytics Cloud, Oracle Digital Assistant/Chatbot Services and Solutions and a member of the Oracle Partner Network has announced it will offer free PeopleSoft migrations to Oracle Cloud to its customers. “As more enterprises incorporate cloud technology in their IT environments, interest has grown for cloudlike approaches to on-premise infrastructure. This solution helps companies achieve the scalability, security, flexible consumption and system management they need. Applying over 16 years of operational expertise in PeopleSoft, Astute provides a fully managed cloud experience as an alternative to the conventional on-premise solution,” said Arvind Rajan, CEO and Co-Founder of Astute Business Solutions.

BigID raises $50 million Series C funding. BigID, a data intelligence platform that helps enterprise organizations analyze data at scale, has raised $50 million in its latest round of funding. This brings the total raised by the data platform to $144 million. “Privacy and governance of personal data is a defining 21st-century problem as commerce and communication shift online,” said Dimitri Sirota, CEO and co-founder of BigID, “However, ensuring the integrity and protection of personal data requires companies go beyond privacy policy and process and deliver customers true data-level accountability and transparency.” This latest investment will go toward expanding BigID’s engineering and sales teams.

CDP BlueConic raises $13 million in Series B funding. The latest round brings BlueConic’s total to $25 million. Last year, the customer data platform updated its consent management capabilities to support worldwide consumer privacy regulations and launched its predictive modeling capabilities in the platform for marketing and data science users. “Most brands still lack a single source of customer data truth down to the individual level that is accessible in real-time to marketers and their activation channels,” said BlueConic CEO and co-founder. “That’s why we’ve designed our CDP from inception to meet the ever-evolving needs of the marketer, and we’ll continue to build on that foundation of flexibility.”

SRAX launches ad targeting with opt-in data. Digital marketing and consumer data management tech provider SRAX says its platform “enables people to own and earn from their data.” The platform claims to have over 16 million global users, offering a CCPA compliant data set. As CCPA affects what data can be used for targeting purposes, first-party data is becoming even more valuable for brands. The platform offers informed opted-in consumer data from survey responses, integrations with consumers’ online accounts and other customer journey touchpoints.

On the Move

Kathy Bachmann has been named the general manager of the Americas for the analytics platform Analytic Partners. She will be based in New York City and manage team strategy, product and revenue growth for both the North America and Latin America markets. “Kathy brings to Analytic Partners a unique and diverse background in growth and strategy. She will undoubtedly be an exceptional leader as we continue to grow in the Americas and help our clients turn data into expertise,” said CEO Nancy Smith. Bachmann has held a number of leadership roles within the industry, including COO for Throtle and a GM role at Neustar, along with marketing positions at Quest Diagnostics, Merrill Lynch and American Express. She most recently served as the COO for Comscore.

The NPD Group, a global information company, has promoted Larissa Jensen to VP, Industry Advisor for its U.S. beauty business. Larissa has been with NPD for 15 years, most recently in the role of executive director and industry analyst, serving as the company’s beauty spokesperson. She is a frequent speaker at industry events and noted expert in the field, according to the NPD Group. “Larissa packages passion, enthusiasm, and insightfulness to delight our clients and the broader beauty community with her in-depth understanding of the beauty industry and its trends. She is a valuable asset to all who cross her path, including those striving to take their beauty business to the next level,” said Lori Monaco, president of U.S. Beauty for The NPD Group. Prior to joining the NPD Group, Jensen held roles at Estée Lauder Companies, Inc. and L’Oréal USA.

Crossmedia, an independent media agency, has hired Matt Bayer to serve in a newly created position: head of integrated media sourcing. The company says the new role underscores its commitment to channel-neutral, data-driven buying and that Bayer will be a centralized leader across all of the agency’s media activations. “This new role further strengthens our abilities to use data analytics to drive the best outcomes for our clients,” said Crossmedia’s head of growth Mike Farasciano. Bayer will report directly to CEO Kamran Asghar and his responsibilities will include managing Crossmedia’s media planning and buying teams.

Amobee, an advertising platform for running campaigns across TV, digital and social, has named Samba Natarajan CEO. He will be replacing Kim Perell who is stepping down to work with startup entrepreneurs. Before taking on the CEO role, Natarajan served as the CEO of Singtel’s Group Digital Life (Amobee is a subsidiary of Singtel, a communications technology company). While leading Singtel’s Group Digital Life, Natarajan was responsible for the company’s full digital profile, including Amobee, HOOQ, DataSpark and Innov8. “Samba is a proven CEO who has been intimately involved with Amobee over the past five years. His strong content knowledge and global corporate experience will allow us to further accelerate our growth strategy to win in converged advertising,” said Amobee Chairman Evangelos Simoudis.

Paula Darvell has been hired as the new chief marketing officer for Snow Software, a technology intelligence solution. Reporting to the company’s CEO Vishal Rao, she will be based in the UK and oversee Snow Software’s worldwide marketing efforts. Darvell is replacing Sanjay Castelino who has been named chief product officer. “Paula has a wealth of marketing experience spanning leading technology organizations of varying size and market stage. She brings a strong balance of both market and community building, which is invaluable as we meet rising customer demand for technology intelligence,” said Rao. Prior to joining Snow Software, Darvell served as the VP of EMEA marketing at Apptio. She has also held marketing leadership roles at IBM, FileNet and Unisys.

The ad tech platform Maru/Matchbox has named Andrew Hawn as its new managing director of technology. Hawn is returning to the company after spending two years at MetaForesight and Sparks & Honey. “I am delighted to welcome Andrew back to the Matchbox team. He is clever, collaborative and committed to delivering technology based advisory,” said CEO Ged Parton. Hawn will be charged with delivering insights to Maru/Matchbox clients and based in Los Angeles. His hiring comes just three months after Maru/Matchbox appointed Sudhanshu Gaur VP of analytics.


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


About the author

Amy Gesenhues
Contributor
Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

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