Midterm political spending throws spanner into regional advertiser holiday plans

Political media spending in the run-up to November’s midterm elections has inflated TV and streaming ad prices for regular advertisers.

It’s forcing advertisers operating in battleground states like Texas, Wisconsin, Maine and Michigan to choose between “going dark,”fleeing to the expensive safe havens of premium streaming networks, or swallowing a higher cost of advertising during the crucial fourth quarter, when many advertisers devote as much as 50% of their annual budget to marketing in an attempt to capture Thanksgiving and Christmas sales.

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Some $8.2 billion of the total $12 billion expected to be spent in the run-up to the midterm elections in November will go towards TV or CTV, according to AdImpact. 

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Salesforce’s $5.7 billion Braze deal puts marketers at an ecosystem crossroads

Salesforce’s planned acquisition of Braze was the week’s defining martech deal: the companies announced a definitive agreement on October 20 valuing Braze at approximately $5.66 billion. 

Pending regulatory and shareholder approval – both are publicly listed companies – the deal has been interpreted as a successful exit for the company, and a strategically sound M&A move for Salesforce, even if some financial institutions did question the valuation. 

In the interim, Salesforce says Braze’s real-time customer engagement and AI decisioning would complement Marketing Cloud, Data 360, Customer 360 and Agentforce. This would amount to a more connected system: customer data informs marketing decisions, and engagement results feed back into the wider business, reducing the complications of market fragmentation. 

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