Adobe this week announced it will acquire digital marketing platform Marketo from Vista Equity Partners. The $4.75 billion deal would be Adobe’s largest to date and bolster them in competition with incumbents like Salesforce, who have prioritized expanding into the marketing automation space (most notably through the $2.5 billion acquisition of ExactTarget). Adobe’s Digital Experience business, which includes their own marketing software, generated $614 million in revenue last quarter, demonstrating a 21% year-over-year growth from 2017. ADBE is up 78% over the past year.
In digital policy news, the EU Competition Commissioner has initiated a preliminary investigation of Amazon to determine whether data collected on its third-party vendors constitutes anti-competitive practices. While acknowledging that the e-commerce platform supports small businesses, the investigation will look at antitrust concerns regarding Amazon’s collection of data from third-party merchants. Amazon sellers made up 20% of the e-commerce giant’s revenue in Q2’18.
The social media space saw Pinterest add eight new influencer platforms to its Marketing Partners program. As part of its aim to increase the social media site’s ability to connect brands to influencers, Pinterest will open its API to new influencer marketing platforms including Open Influence, HYPR, Klear, AspireIQ, Mavrck, IZEA, Influence.co and Obvious.ly and offer insights and reporting metrics on influencer campaigns’ views, impressions, click-throughs and saves.
In digital marketing news, Amazon has grown to be third in digital advertising following only Google and Facebook, according to a recent eMarketer report. Now encompassing 4.15% of the US digital advertising market and estimated to earn $4.61 billion in 2018 in US digital ad revenue, Amazon’s market share is growing, while, notably, Google’s and Facebook’s are shrinking. The report highlights that Amazon’s growth is correlated with the trend of consumers’ product searches increasingly beginning directly in the platform.
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Featured in e-commerce listings this week we have a SBA pre-approved $499K fashion and apparel site, with an authoritative brand in the niche as one of Pinterest’s few buyable pins program sites, high gross margin of 60%, strong annual growth of c.295% CAGR for the period 2015 to 2017, significant traffic of 1,629,000 page views over the last 12 months, and diversified sales across over 140 SKUs. If you are interested in either of the above businesses, please follow the link to request a prospectus.
In events news, FE will be sponsoring MerchConference on September 27-28 in Seattle, where Founder Thomas Smale will be hosting a networking drinks event on the evening of the 27th following the conference. Click here if you will be in the area and would like to RSVP!
Continue reading below for more on Adobe’s acquisition of Marketo, Amazon reaching third in digital advertisements and the EU commissioner’s investigation of Amazon.
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In The News…
Adobe to Acquire Marketo
Adobe will acquire marketing automation platform Marketo for $4.75 billion.
Informants familiar with the matter first reported that the digital platform company could announce the acquisition as early as next week, but Adobe officially announced the acquisition Thursday evening. Adobe’s push into a more robust marketing automation strategy has implications for HubSpot, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce, as they are the large players in the space. Founded in 2006, Marketo went public in 2013 and was acquired by Vista three years later for $1.8 billion. Marketo CEO Steve Lucas will stay on as head of the company and will work inside Adobe’s Digital Experience Group. Of the acquisition, Adobe released in a statement, “Adding Marketo’s engagement platform to Adobe Experience Cloud will enable Adobe to offer an unrivaled set of solutions for delivering transformative customer experiences across industries and companies of all sizes.”
Earlier this month, Reuters had reported Adobe was in talks to purchase Marketo.
EU Competition Commission Investigates Amazon
The European Union’s competition commissioner announced this week that the oversight agency is investigating Amazon’s business practices.
Margrethe Vestager acknowledged that Amazon offering third-party merchants the ability to sell on their platform was beneficial for small businesses, as well as the fact that collecting data had legitimate uses including improved customer service. However, she countered this by stating that access to third-party data has the potential to give Amazon an unfair competitive advantage. The oversight agency has solicited survey responses from a number of third-party merchants on Amazon in order to understand more about the relationship between Amazon and the merchants. In response to whether they would be investigating anti-trust laws, Vestager responded, “The question here is about the data, because if you as Amazon get the data from the smaller merchants that you host — which can be of course completely legitimate because you can improve your service to these smaller merchants — well, do you then also use this data to do your own calculations? What is the new big thing, what is it that people want, what kind of offers do they like to receive, what makes them buy things.”
Close to 20% of Amazon’s revenue for Q2’18 came from third-party selling services.
Pinterest Opens API to Eight Third-Party Influencer Platforms
Pinterest is expanding its Marketing Partners program to include eight more influencer marketing platforms.
The expansion of their API will mean brands can more easily find and connect with influencers on Pinterest to generate more brand recognition and exposure. Aaron Ru of Pinterest’s corporate development team shared, “Starting today, we’re opening our content marketing API to third-party influencer marketing platforms to help brands and influencers collaborate more effectively and create exciting new things on Pinterest.” Newly added to the program are Open Influence, HYPR, Klear, AspireIQ, Mavrck, IZEA, Influence.co and Obvious.ly. Mavrck co-founder and CEO Lyle Stevens, says the Pinterest partnership will be a milestone in brands’ ability to understand engagement with content on the app. “Real-time analytics about Pin engagements — including views, close-ups, and click-throughs — will help us to better understand Pinners’ abilities to drive customer behaviors for brands.”
The influencer marketing platform partners will also report on performance metrics around individual campaigns, including monthly views, impressions, click-throughs and saves.