In a world where technology firms dominate the global economy, it makes sense that many companies want to pour money into tech projects.
Deloitte and OnResearch recently surveyed 500 US executives from privately-held mid-market companies and found that one-third of respondents spend more than 5% of their annual revenues on technology. Another 45% of respondents spend between 1% and 5% of their revenues on tech. More than half of the respondents—57%—said they’re spending more on tech this year than they did last year.
Marketers are spending on tech, too. According to an April report by Forrester Research, US marketers will increase their investment in marketing technology by 27.1% over the next four years, spending more than $122 billion on marketing tech by 2022.
Ad tech investments have also been on the rise this summer. While the investments are varied and range from funding rounds to acquisitions, ad tech firms like MediaMath, Integral Ad Science, AppNexus and Acxiom have each struck deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and in some cases billions, within the past few months.
On a smaller scale, an emerging category of ad tech vendor—customer data platforms (CDPs)—also has gotten investors’ attention. Since April, at least seven CDPs have raised funding or been acquired by larger firms.