Tech giant Adobe announced Thursday it is buying marketing-software firm Marketo for $4.75 billion. The move may have a ripple effect on the realm of enterprise sales and marketing.
Marketo, based in San Mateo, CA, was founded in 2006 and built its business on marketing automation—using software to track and manage potential customers’ interactions with a company. The firm had an IPO in 2013 and was bought out by Vista Equity Partners for $1.79 billion in 2016 (not a bad turnaround for Vista here).
San Jose, CA-based Adobe (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ADBE]]) is moving more deeply into enterprise commerce, sales, and marketing. The company, best known for Photoshop and other consumer-facing tools, acquired e-commerce firm Magento for $1.68 billion back in May.
Enterprise marketing and sales tech has become a more crowded field in the past decade. Other major players include Oracle (which bought Eloqua in 2012), Salesforce (which acquired ExactTarget in 2013), HubSpot (NYSE: [[ticker:HUBS]]), Drift, and ThriveHive on the small-business end.
The Adobe-Marketo deal could affect all of these companies, and more, as other tech giants (see Microsoft) look to expand in the field. We’ll be watching for more consolidation and reactions from the marketing-tech community.
Author: Gregory T. Huang
Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003.
Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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