Applications
Adobe continues digital marketing spree with $600 million Neolane acquisition
MUMBAI: Adobe extended a multi-year acquisition spree to build its digital marketing business today with the $600 million acquisition of Neolane , a French company that helps marketers manage their marketing across channels such as the Web, social networks, mobile, and point of sale.
The cash purchase further builds up what Adobe calls the Marketing Cloud, a set of services that help marketers manage their online advertising. Adobe, still better known for its iconic design and content creation and editing software such as PhotoShop, has made a big push in recent years to marry those products with the fast-growing area of online marketing. It bought Omniture in 2009, Day Software in 2010, Demdex and Auditude in 2011, and Efficient Frontier last year. Neolane will become Adobe‘s sixth digital marketing business unit.
The acquisition of the 12-year-old company essentially catapults Adobe from providing strictly digital marketing services to broader marketing, even offline channels such as direct mail and call centers, John Mellor, vice president of strategy and business development for Adobe‘s digital marketing business, said in an interview. For instance, a travel firm planning a summer getaway marketing campaign wants to start sending out direct mail in February, follow up by email and perhaps create a special website all as part of one campaign. “I don‘t want to walk into a CMO‘s office and just talk about digital marketing,” says Mellor. “They don‘t think of it that way. People want to coordinate all this stuff together.”
Brad Rencher, Adobe‘s senior vice president and general manager of digital marketing, further explained in a blog post about the acquisition:
This is a critical addition to our complete set of analytics, targeting, social, content management and media optimisation solutions. Neolane will integrate with our solutions to empower cross-channel and highly personalised campaign management across the web, email, social, mobile, point of sale, direct mail, call center and other emerging channels.
The combination of Adobe and Neolane will give customers richer customer profiles, greater activation of social and mobile data, better definition of highly valuable customer segments, and more sophisticated automation and execution platforms. Many customers already rely on both Adobe and Neolane and will benefit from further integration between the Adobe Marketing Cloud and Neolane‘s cross-channel capabilities.
The company‘s revenues rose 40 per cent last year, to $58 million. Adobe said it doesn‘t expect the addition to materially affect its revenue forecast this year.
Applications
With 57 per cent single new users, Ashley Madison rebrands as discreet dating platform
Platform says majority of new members now identify as single
INDIA: Ashley Madison is shedding the “married-dating” label that defined it for two decades, repositioning itself as a platform for discreet dating in what it calls the post-social media age.
The rebrand, unveiled in India on 27 February, 2026, marks a structural shift in business model and identity. Once synonymous with married dating, the company now describes itself as the “premier destination for discreet dating” under a new tagline: Where Desire Meets Discretion.
The pivot is data-driven. Internal figures show that 57 per cent of global sign-ups between 1 January and 31 December, 2025 identified as single: a notable departure from the platform’s married core. The company argues that its community has already evolved beyond its original positioning.
“In an age where our lives have been constantly put on public display, privacy has become the new luxury,” said Ashley Madison chief strategy officer Paul Keable. He framed the platform’s offering as “ethical discretion” for singles, separated, divorced and non-monogamous users seeking private connections.
The shift also taps into wider digital fatigue. A global survey conducted by YouGov for Ashley Madison, covering 13,071 adults across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, found mounting discomfort with hyper-public online lives.
Among dating app users, 30 per cent cited constant swiping and messaging as a source of fatigue, while 24 per cent pointed to pressure to curate public-facing profiles and early personal disclosure. Some 27 per cent said fears of screenshots or information being shared contributed to exhaustion; an equal share cited unwanted attention.
The retreat from oversharing appears broader. According to the survey, 46 per cent of adults actively try to keep most aspects of their life private online. Only 8 per cent feel comfortable sharing most aspects publicly, while 35 per cent say they are becoming more selective about what they disclose.
Ashley Madison is betting that this cultural recalibration towards controlled visibility can be monetised. By doubling down on privacy infrastructure and reframing itself around discretion rather than infidelity, the company is attempting to convert reputational baggage into a premium proposition.
