• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 30, 2013

Data company BlueKai announced an unusual partnership Tuesday with IBM that connects customers using IBM's tag management platform, IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX), a part of the company's Digital Analytics suite, with BlueKai's data management platform (DMP) across offline, online and mobile channels.

IBM DDX is a tag management platform aimed at simplifying the management of IBM and third-party page tags. The partnership underscores how traditional marketing-related technology companies like IBM partner with online fledging companies to drive better return on investment in digital and fragmented media landscape.

All IBM clients wanting to tap into BlueKai's SaaS-Solution for cross-channel data activation will have access to the data management capabilities.

Interest in tag management systems continues to rise as marketers face pressure to keep pace with data collection, according to Forrester Research. The research firm surveyed 76 tag management system users last year to learn about adoption and practices. About half of survey respondents have used their tag management solutions for a year or less; about 2%, for less than five years.

John Sedlak, senior vice president of global sales at BlueKai, said the potential for growth resides in the data. Brands have extended using tags from banner advertising to site customization, product recommendations, and lookalike modeling, he said. Marketers have begun to connect data and customer interactions from offline, digital, mobile and social sources.

Tag management continues to catch the eye of investors. Earlier in April, Tealium raised $15.6 million in series C financing led by Tenaya Capital. Battery Ventures and Presidio Ventures also participated in the round. Tealium has raised a total of $27.2 million. It now integrates with 500 digital marketing vendor tags that enable customers to deploy nearly any major digital marketing solution, from analytics to search marketing.

The 500 integrations within Tealium iQ creates the industry's largest digital marketing ecosystem. The integrations ease complexities by enabling marketers to implement and manage tag solutions by themselves without ongoing IT resource requirements.