New AI Tools for Marketers: Salesforce and Adobe launch generative AI products aimed at streamlining workflows and bolstering campaign performance through customization.

ChatGPT may have all of the buzz when it comes to AI platforms, but marketing technology and platforms are quickly catching up by adding a host of AI features to their systems. For starters, Adobe unveiled “Generative Fill” in Photoshop last week, a feature that uses AI to extend the canvas of your design, fill in backgrounds, and more. Meanwhile, Acquia unveiled a chatbot within its digital asset management platform.

Startups put OpenAI’s Microsoft advantage to the test: OpenAI is becoming one of the US' most valuable startups over its sensational generative AI. Leadership in the space requires skillful monetization.

Tech’s economic pain isn’t letting up: Economic recovery eludes the tech industry as the Fed targets the overall strong job market’s role in driving inflation. Expect more corporate downsizing.

US retail sales grew 7.6% over the holiday season: Consumers diversified their spending due to inflation and a desire to return to pre-pandemic activities such as eating out.

Nearly 90% of CMOs and senior marketing executives are planning to increase their marketing budgets in 2023, according to a recent survey by Matter Communications. The top area of investment will be public relations and social media, which over two-thirds of marketers say provided the most ROI over the past year.

After a few waves of innovation and consolidation, the B2C martech landscape is dominated by a small number of broad suite providers. There’s also a very long tail of niche providers, some of which provide cutting-edge point solutions.

Salesforce-owned Slack announced Canvas, an integrated feature that allows users to create and edit documents without leaving the application.

Adobe announced last week that it’s buying design platform Figma for $20 billion (or roughly half a Twitter). The news came shortly after Canva announced an expansion of its user-friendly design suite.

US marketing tech spending to top $20 billion this year: Growth reflects increased importance of using data to improve customer experience.

Is AI becoming Big Brother? Human presence and emotional-state detection technologies are raising civil rights alarms bells. Although they could have merits for productivity, they’re also invasive and error-prone.

Despite a number of economic challenges, retail spending is expected to remain strong: Retail sales growth slowed in February but strong job and wage increases and declining unemployment provide reasons for optimism.

The market’s appetite for personalization technology keeps growing: As investors see more brands prioritizing customer engagement, CX platform Insider becomes one of the few female-led SaaS unicorns in the world.

The 2021 holiday season saw the highest retail growth in 20 years, setting the stage for a solid 2022 holiday season.

Find out how the financial services industry is accelerating its adoption of mobile-first marketing

Payments Ecosystem: This year will reveal how providers must adapt to lasting pandemic-driven digitization across payments channels, ranging from in-store retail to B2B ecommerce.

In this new digital-first world, the only way a brand can survive is by democratizing content experience management

In this Meet the Analyst Webinar, Dave Frankland, our principal analyst, will discuss the key trends impacting a new wave of marketing automation and email marketing.

Third-party cookies may be going away, but first-party data is still yours to own, manage, and protect

Black Friday brick-and-mortar traffic drops 28.3% from 2019 but rises 47.5% over last year: The results shows consumers are stretching out the holiday season by shopping earlier in wake of supply chain concerns.