If you’re interested in reading the 2018 edition of the ‘Rise Of The Digital Marketing Suite’ you can find it here.
In Q2 2014, Bowery Capital came up with a series of a
rticles on the ‘Rise of the Digital Marketing Suite’. We divided the digital marketing sector into six key categories, created the market landscape and conducted deep-dives on big players as well as independent companies. In 2015, we wrote two follow-up posts on the market and product updates in the digital marketing landscape.
To serve as a refresher, we provide below an update on the key companies that were acquired or went public since our last report. As many folks who read our previous report on the ‘Rise of the Digital Marketing Suite’, we provided everyone with a public Google Spreadsheet called Market Comparables which we have updated and added here. Since our last edition of the Rise of the Digital Marketing Suite report, there have been quite a few updates from the big players. We lay these out below.
1. Oracle Continues Their Model Of Inorganic Growth. In August 2015, Oracle acquired Maxymiser (for an undisclosed amount). In April of 2017, Oracle went big and acquired Moat for a total of $850M. This was their 2nd largest acquisition in the marketing space. A year later, Oracle made its latest purchase, acquiring Grapeshot (for an undisclosed amount). With these acquisitions, Oracle strengthened their analytics, content management, and social platforms remaining a large player in the space.
2. Adobe Completes Their Digital Marketing Package. Like Oracle, Adobe made three acquisitions in the digital marketing field. In May of 2016, Adobe acquired Livefyre (for an undisclosed amount). Then in April 2018, they acquired Uru (for an undisclosed amount). Their lastest acquisition to date was in May 2018, with the purchase of Magento Commerce for a total of $1.7B. This was huge as it gave Adobe its first product in the e-commerce category and officially completed their digital marketing package. With the other two acquisitions, Adobe added to their analytics and content management platforms.
3. IBM Strays Away From Past Theme Of Building In-House Products. IBM acquired Resource/Ammirati (for an undisclosed amount) in January 2016. Shortly after in February 2016, IBM went and purchased ecx.io (for an undisclosed amount). In a news release, IBM stated that both of these moves were part of an initiative to enhance the design and experience prowess of IBM iX. These acquisitions joined IBM’s e-commerce and content management platforms.
4. Salesforce Continues Tradition Of Going Deep In Each Category And Completes Solution. In June of 2016, Salesforce acquired Demandware for a total of $2.8B. This was their largest acquisition in their marketing cloud to date and – like Adobe – their first product in the ecommerce category. This helped complete their solution. In January 2017, Salesforce acquired Sequence (for an undisclosed amount). The addition of Sequence competes with IBM’s recent theme of adding design companies to their digital marketing suite. With Sequence, Salesforce currently has four products in their social category. Recently on July 16th Salesforce bought Datorama for $850 million adding to their marketing analytics category. This move was big for Salesforce as they had one of the weaker analytics category when compared to the top 5 players. This move would also make the 4th largest exit for an Israeli startup.
5. Microsoft Makes No Acquisitions In Digital Marketing Space. From this, it is appearing more and more likely that Microsoft will be out of the digital marketing space soon. For those who read our last report, you might remember that we mentioned Microsoft doesn’t 100% embrace the marketing suite and are the only top 5 player that does not offer a unified solution.
6. IPOs Headlined By Shopify, An Ecommerce Platform. Since our last report, there have been six digital marketing companies that have gone public. We list them below, along with the companies’ date of IPO, amount raised through the IPO, and current market cap. First in May 2015, Shopify went public raising $151M through the IPO and are currently holding the largest market cap of the bunch at $15.2B. Next was Albert Technologies in June 2015. The AI marketing firm raised $42M through the IPO and their current market cap is at $39.5M. In 2016, ShareRoot, a social marketing company, went public raising an undisclosed amount and holding a current market cap of $7.4M. Towards the end of 2017, there were two IPOs in the space. First was SendGrid; the email marketing firm went public in November 2017, raising $131 through the IPO and holding the second highest market cap at $1.2B. Second was iClick Interactive – a marketing technology company based in China. They went public in December 2017, raising $30M through the IPO and currently have a market cap of $346M. The most recent was in February 2018 by the marketing analytics firm Cardlytics. They raised $70M through the IPO and currently hold a market cap of $416M. Cardlytics was also the first technology company to go public this year. There are no other updates, but we expect to see a few more IPOs in the digital marketing space in the near future.
In the next blog post, we’ll cover updates about key product offerings from the digital marketing players since our last ‘Rise Of The Digital Marketing Suite’ report.
If you liked “Rise Of The Digital Marketing Suite – 2018 Market Update” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog. Special thanks to Nour Jedidi for his contribution and work on this post
