For every outage and hack there is an increasing level of anxiety about the ability of the stack to hold up. Security audits and gamified phishing tests are the norm for many (everybody fails obvs).
Next year we'll celebrate PHP Day - if we're all still here.
Vile Rumour & Gossip
Claude to google ads for attribution - Most customers have given up on GA4 - which is why google made it so confusing. the Shopify crew have either moved to use just their data, or increasingly have built/are building a Claude conversion and attribution interface. The results are seemingly pretty trustworthy, and tokens are not being burned.
CPM is all over the place - My insistence that paid costs are rising inexorably may have been a little bit previous. The more nuanced version is that those who really do specialise in Meta - have managed to keep a level of balance in CPM, which given that customers are now leaving all targeting to Meta themselves is really impressive.
An Acquisition exit clause please - More on Braze later, but there’s such disappointment in the market about this transaction because Braze was really good, and will now inevitably worsen. A few people have suggested that they’ll be asking for “exit” clauses in contracts from now on, allowing them to leave the moment a vendor sells. We hear you :)
Is ABM back? - Tech marketing has been democratised by tools like Ample Market. When everyone has good data, rich ICP’s and the same automated content, then your only differentiator is the relevance of the content you create, which is then searched by an LLM and used by a customer developer who is making a recommendation for POC based exclusively on what Claude says. You’ GOT to use the customer’s language otherwise it’s a non starter.
Big Tech shows are getting smaller/more intimate - The trade show market has taken a beating this autumn. NRF Paris, Human X (Amsterdam), eCommerce Expo (UK) and Shoptalk Nashville - all ouchy empty and looking for an explanation. Some newcomers such as “RetailClub” are faring much better... if I were a marketing manager in tech right now 2027 would be a hard call.
SI’s wanna be Agencies
The story differs across regions. In the U.S. the SI’s are fearful... AI is more prevalent and they are seeing pipeline drop and project size fall off a cliff. Northern Europe is actually still strong, with some SI’s seeing healthy growth, and high quality SI’s in fairly rude health.
The challenge, of course, is that a System Integrator has very few differentiators, fewer even than “agencies”, who are largely in consulting or media services. These are also in uncertain times, but at least the work is there - more media money than ever and a rich opportunity for a while in AI-readiness consulting.
What happens to the 2-5,000 offshore developers? I can’t see a good outcome there. Their strength is “low level intellectual effort”, which is where the models are more efficient.
It does mean though - that there are rich exits for now in the media and consulting markets, and as the likes of EPAM and Valtech struggle to offload that overhead whilst adjusting their offerings, some much needed breathing room for others.
When Braze gets acquired...
You can hear the cheers and boos from across the ecosystem.... Sales Leaders rubbing their hands with glee as they use braze’s exit to motivate their options-carrying teams, whilst customers shake their heads and look at their renewal dates. Of course, founders and stock holders will get the cash, options people are left with “value over time”.
Braze is a good product, best of breed stacks alongside Snowflake and some others have done very well for brands the last 5yrs or so. But Salesforce? Seriously?
This really means that the SF suitcase gets bigger, and the sales teams there have yet another reason to SDR the universe yet again - annoying the brands they’re trying to sell to and running off with the commission whilst slopey shouldered project teams implement a decaying product. And believe me - the product will decay - fast.
I had a chat last week with someone who has just acquired a software firm, for $100k. The firm in question had raised $175m in funding, but had “failed”. It had failed because it had to pay back that massive debt, and so charged too much and spread itself too thin in the hope of winning clients. The model is so broken it cant see how the wood for the trees, and sadly they’ve all been chopped down.
The Security Problem - who is going to pay?
A truly awful week for Cyber last week. Some might say that at last the CISO is having to do more than fold their arms and send out phishing emails to test the staff, but we’re not like that here - no sireee.
Shopify’s app store delisted 498 apps (49 now recovered) - you can see the list here.
Oracle posted an emergency update for a critical flaw in Java last week - oops.
The whole PHP thing (I’m sure we all feel sorry for the BBC Cyber guy who hadn’t heard of PHP).... NOT! - I’m told that bug was 22yrs old by the way.
Bottom line - security investment for everyone has just increased, taking money from other parts of the stack and delaying the Xmas SaaS shopping that many were preparing for.
We are back on song with the podcast that accompanies this newsletter. I recently had a good chat with Ram Venkataraman the CEO of Kibo Commerce. We love a bit of competition in the market, and for both eCom and OMS Kibo are now in Europe and winning - the have had the weird “top right in Forrester” thing twice now - and we talked about that too.... see it here.
More soon - laters...
Jamie
