As more marketing bodies amplify their call to governments to work with them in addressing the marketing skills crisis in the media, It is encouraging to learn of the UK government’s £3.8 billion funding for skills training announced recently.

This coming at a time when a study by Chartered Institute of Marketers, CIM, found 71% of 16-24 year olds (Gen-Z) believe they have missed out on training opportunities due to Covid19 with over a third (36%) of students say they feel less confident in their ability since the pandemic.

However there is need to invest more in industry-led training programmes from professional marketing associations.

And as the marketing industry evolves and positions itself post COVID-19, marketers are adopting innovative ways to better connect consumer behavior to sales, according to a new study by The Trade Desk.

The research shows the number of marketers who intend to use sales data very frequently, versus those who currently use it, is expected to nearly triple in the next 12 months. The research also shows that 76 percent of marketers plan to use point-of-sale data frequently in the next 12 months as they look to connect advertising activity to consumer purchases, whether it happens online or in the store.

OneScreen.ai, a SaaS-enabled B2B marketplace provider for out-of-home (OOH) advertising, has raised an additional $3 million in seed funding to create the first-of-its-kind media platform that brings together the fragmented OOH advertising landscape.

The funding, $2.6 million from Asymmetric Capital Partners and $400k from Impellent Ventures, will be used to develop the first streamlined, connected OOH market network, via an all-in-one platform. The startup has raised $4.5 million to date.

In advertising, Xandr, AT&T’s advanced advertising company, has announced a new deals platform within Xandr Monetize.

Xandr’s Monetize SSP now offers a feature-rich, intuitive deals platform coupled with marketplace innovation which empowers sellers to drive high-value transactions with buyers.

With private marketplace spending surpassing the open exchange in 2020 for the first time ever, it is clear deals are becoming increasingly important. Programmatic deals are now the preferred transaction type with buyers driving demand for deals as they want the most premium and safe inventory, especially when it comes to Connected TV (CTV).

Elsewhere, WPP's MediaCom has been named as The Coca-Cola Company’s Global Marketing Network Partner as part of relationship that will span more than 200 markets around the world.

The company put together experts across creative, media and data as part of a bespoke team, called OpenX, to win the global task. That team has now been briefed to become a catalyst for the transformation of Coca-Cola’s marketing effectiveness and efficiency and will start its work on January 1 2022.

Creatio, a global vendor of one platform to automate industry workflows and CRM with no-code and a maximum degree of freedom, announced its partnership with ZED Consulting.

ZED Consulting is a UK based team of CRM consultants that help businesses implement sales, marketing, service/support and related applications to help them transform the way they work, generate performance and productivity improvements and deliver enhanced customer experiences.

And rlaxx TV, the European-based free ad-supported streaming service (FAST+AVOD), announced a partnership with Publica, a connected TV (CTV) ad platform. Working with Publica enables rlaxx TV to provide its advertisers with ad break controls and the ability to reach a wide audience with high-quality, TV-like ad experiences when streaming.

Bob Koigi is an editor at Marketing Report EU

www.marketingreport.eu