Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online-based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. It has significantly transformed the way brands and businesses utilize technology for marketing since the 1990s and 2000s. As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life, and as people increasingly used digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e-books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace. Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones, callbacks, and on-hold mobile ringtones. The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates digital marketing from online marketing.
Bloomreach is a cloud-based e-commerce experience platform and B2B service specializing in marketing automation, product discovery, and content management systems. The company, founded in 2009 by Raj De Datta and Ashutosh Garg, is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
Qlik [pronounced "klik"] provides a data integration, analytics, and artificial intelligence platform. The software company was founded in 1993 in Lund, Sweden and is now based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, United States. Thoma Bravo made the company private in 2016.
HubSpot, Inc. is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.
Shopify Inc., stylized as shopify, is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail POS (point-of-sale) systems. The platform offers retailers a suite of services, including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services. It was founded in 2000 under the name ExactTarget. The company filed for an IPO in 2007, but withdrew its filing two years later and raised $145 million in funding. It acquired CoTweet, Pardot, iGoDigital and Keymail Marketing. In 2012, it raised $161.5 million in an initial public offering, before being acquired by Salesforce for $2.5 billion in 2013. ExactTarget was renamed Salesforce Marketing Cloud in 2014 after its acquisition by Salesforce.
Oracle Bronto provides a cloud-based commerce marketing automation platform to mid-market and enterprise organizations.
DHgate.com is a Chinese business-to-business (B2B) and Business-to-consumer cross-border e-commerce marketplace that facilitates the sale of manufactured products from suppliers to small and medium retailers. It is one of the largest B2B-cross-border e-commerce trade platforms in China. The company is based in Beijing and has offices worldwide, including in the US and UK.
JD.com, Inc., also known as Jingdong, formerly called 360buy, is a Chinese e-commerce company headquartered in Beijing. It is one of the two massive B2C online retailers in China by transaction volume and revenue, and is a major competitor to Alibaba-run Tmall. With revenues more than US152.8 billion in 2023, JD.com is China’s largest retailer by revenue, and ranks 52 on Fortune Global 500. JD.com’s portfolio spans across retail, technology, logistics, health care, industrials, property management, private label, insurance, and international business.
Act-On Software is a software-as-a-service product for marketing automation. The company is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and was founded in 2008, originally retailing its software exclusively through Cisco, which provided $2 million in funding.
Datadog, Inc. is an American company that provides an observability service for cloud-scale applications, providing monitoring of servers, databases, tools, and services, through a SaaS-based data analytics platform. Founded and headquartered in New York City, the company is a publicly traded entity on the Nasdaq stock exchange. The mascot is a dog named Bits.
Marketing automation refers to software platforms and technologies designed for marketing departments and organizations automate repetitive tasks and consolidate multi-channel interactions, tracking and web analytics, lead scoring, campaign management and reporting into one system. It often integrates with customer relationship management (CRM) and customer data platform (CDP) software.
Braze, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company based in New York City. It is a customer engagement platform used by businesses for multichannel marketing.
The commercialization of the Internet encompasses the creation and management of online services principally for financial gain. It typically involves the increasing monetization of network services and consumer products mediated through the varied use of Internet technologies. Common forms of Internet commercialization include e-commerce, electronic money, and advanced marketing techniques including personalized and targeted advertising. The effects of the commercialization of the Internet are controversial, with benefits that simplify daily life and repercussions that challenge personal freedoms, including surveillance capitalism and data tracking. This began with the National Science Foundation funding supercomputing center and then universities being able to develop supercomputer sites for research and academic purposes.
Brevo, formerly Sendinblue, is a SaaS solution for relationship marketing. The company was founded in 2012 by Armand Thiberge, and offers a cloud-based marketing communication software suite with email marketing, transactional email, marketing automation, customer-relationship management, landing pages, Facebook ads, retargeting ads, SMS marketing, and more.
scandiweb is a web development and digital strategy agency specializing in the Magento platform. The company was established in 2003 in Latvia by Antons Sapriko. It has offices in the United States, Sweden, Latvia, and Georgia. scandiweb provides solutions for primarily eCommerce businesses and acts as a strategic partner for IT development focusing on web, mobile, and big data analysis. Their work is centered mainly around Magento but also includes web development on other platforms, like Shopify, BigCommerce, Shopware, and others, 3rd party integration, growth marketing—SEO, PPC, CRO, email marketing, performance optimization, hosting, data analytics, and security services.
The Trade Desk, Inc. is an American multinational technology company that specializes in real-time programmatic marketing automation technologies, products, and services, designed to personalize digital content delivery to users.
ActiveCampaign is a software as a service (SaaS) platform for small-to-mid-sized businesses and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The company offers email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM functionality.
Conversica is a US-based cloud software technology company, headquartered in San Mateo, California, that provides two-way AI-driven conversational software and a suite of Intelligent Virtual Assistants for businesses to engage customers via email, chat, and SMS.
Omnisend is a marketing automation platform for ecommerce businesses, focusing on email and SMS marketing. It is designed by the company Omnisend, established in 2014 under the name Soundest. Omnisend is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
US$698 million (2023)
−US$331 million (2023)