IBM’s Watson Marketing platform officially launched as a standalone company on Monday. IBM announced it would sell off its commerce and marketing cloud business to the investment management firm Centerbridge Partners. The new company, which will announce its new name and brand later this month, offers marketing automation tools, marketing analytics, advertising and content management tools.
With over 1,000 people at startup, they will not be a small company.
The new company will make it easier for other companies to work with the new spinoff, by expanding its “open marketing ecosystem.”
This is something we should be watching as
a potential new SAAS company or a threat to
TTD format. Details on the new company are
rather sketchy at this point.
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Thanks for pointing this out, Spears40.
I am sure that Austin, DreamerDad, Saul, DarthTaco, and a good number of other folks who visit this board will take a keen interest in assessing a competitive threat to TTD that could impact future revenue growth opportunities.
A first thing to figure out will be whether this spinoff is playing in the same sandbox (demand side), with similar neutrality benefits that Jeff Green has often espoused.
volfan84
long TTD (top position)
2 Likes
Centerbridge Partners…10 minutes of research tells me this is a company that purchases distressed assets with private equity to turn them around.
Their targets have been real estate holdings, restaurants and the like.
I see no experience in any of the space TTD has built.
I see no management that has knowledge of the field.
I see no threat.
Please tell me how I’m wrong.
I’d be more concerned if IBM had chosen not to sell it.
Just a Fool
10 Likes
Can take a look for sure. But by definition this is not a new threat as the title of thread suggests.
It is a spun out business. In other words it existed as of Sunday and is now just under new management. Being that IBM marketing has existed for some time and has never bubbled to the surface as a competitive issue for TTD, I’m not sure why it would suddenly be something of note.
IBM didn’t want it anymore apparently.
Darth
7 Likes
IBM is not a threat to TTD, or to just about any company, nor have they been for years.
I always laugh a bit inside when someone will post “hey…Nutanix partnered with IBM!” or “Mongo partnered with IBM!” as if that will actually move the needle in any material way.
It is akin to the Verizon announcement with Zoom. Immaterial. Verizon is losing wireline business and is grasping at straws and SMBs don’t work directly with Verizon, and Verizon also partners with WebEx and pushes them to Enterprises. But it still doesn’t matter…most clients that want Zoom or WebEx will get their solutions from a more traditional reseller/VAR or from the vendors themselves, and not from a telco.
Same thing with IBM…they have been a relic and a non-factor in my IT world for a while…selling off their PC businesses, selling off x86 server businesses, etc etc…
Watson/AI was supposed to be amazing, and there were articles a couple years back that suggested it was WAY too much marketing fluff and no real AI magic happening yet. “Powered by Watson!” was going to be a thing. Was it commercials with Bob Dylan or something?
As already pointed out by others in this thread, this is just a business unit that is unwanted, a distressed asset being bought, and not even an afterthought for CEO Jeff Green and TTD.
Dreamer
26 Likes
To build on Dreamer’s comments, I just searched for the IBM Watson Media Optimizer, which is the component that looks like a TTD competitor.
The product description is similar to TTD and it may have potential, however one section shows a “Planned availability date: February 20, 2018”.
Here’s the URL: https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common…
Soludag
1 Like
From CenterBridge CEO:
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/07/01/soon-rebrand-ibm-wat…
Chief executive Mark Simpson on the new independent market entrant, said: “The marketing cloud industry is ripe for disruption, and we are in a unique position to better support customers through the power of scaled resources and a start-up mindset.
Disruption, indeed. Sorry, bud, someone not only beat you to it, they NAILED it. As usual, Big Blue got caught with their pants … er, servers … down.
Their announcement of what they’re gonna do sounds exactly like what TTD has already done.
No worries here at Raptor HQ.
Dan
4 Likes