Customer Data Platforms
- 2019 saw major acquisitions of customer data platform companies by enterprise technology firms. MasterCard has acquired SessionM, Allsight as been bought by Informatica, Acquia is now the owner of AgilOn and Dun & Bradstreet acquired Lattice Engines.
- Several customer data platform vendors also acquired other companies in 2019. Custora was bought by Amperity, Boxx.ai was acquired by Netcore, Mathan purchased RichRelevance and Leadspace acquired Reachforce.
- PR Newswire lists 17 customer data platform providers with Amperity, Clever Tap, ActionIQ and Simon Data have received greater than $30 million in new funding between June 2019 and January 2020.
Artificial Intelligence for Marketing
- Deck7's thought leadership series identified 10 marketing tools that could be of interest to marketers in 2020. Of those, Crayon was named a leader by The Forrester New Wave: Market and Competitive Intelligence Platforms in 2019. Gartner considered Drift a "cool vendor."
- IBM Watson and Google Cloud AI are well-known names in artificial intelligence.
Blockchain for Advertising
- ClickZ, a digital marketing community founded in 1997, identified 14 companies in 2019 who were successfully using blockchain in advertising, many in innovative ways.
- AdsDax used a public blockchain to track 2.3 million mobile device users who engaged with a pilot ad run by Havas.
- Blockgraph is a TV ecosystem initiative driven by Comcast's FreeWheel and has been in use for a little over 2 years, partnering with major players in "TV, digital video, and advertising across the US and Europe" as they move towards an industry wide ad solution.
- Lucidity — a partner of IBM's Blockchain Accelerator — provides digital advertising analytics by using "blockchain to match signals" across the supply chain.
Summary
During this initial hour of research we have identified some companies or platforms of note in three of the six technologies. We focused on companies, tools or platforms which were mentioned by industry experts as either key players, ones who are making a name for themselves through innovation and others who have been identified as companies to watch.