Snapchat Wildly Popular With Marketers; Zeta Interactive Acquires Acxiom Impact

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

The Hotness

Snapchat ads are expensive, difficult to measure, fleeting and under attack from platform giants. But they’re on an absolute tear with marketers. “Advertisers want to be associated with the trendiest, newest thing, and this year, that’s Snapchat,” says IPG executive VP Chad Stoller in a New York Times story. While most apps, even other global bellwethers, tend to track in Facebook’s wake (I’m looking at you, silent autoplay), Snapchat has taught marketers to perceive its inherent shortcomings in a positive light. Brands “had become too focused on metrics,” says Constance DeCherney, director strategy for the agency TDA Boulder. Diana Hong-Elsey, VP of global digital for the lux marketer Tiffany’s, adds, “When you know content will disappear, you want to interact with it in that moment.” More.

Cloud Goals

Marketing data firm Zeta Interactive has acquired Acxiom Impact, Acxiom’s email marketing unit, to fill out its marketing cloud. Zeta paid north of $50 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal, the largest in its history. The acquisition gives it more clout in the CRM space while allowing Acxiom, which has been accused by its agency clients of providing competitive services [AdExchanger coverage], to operate as more of an infrastructure pure-play. Acxiom’s technology will expand on Zeta’s integration of eBay’s CRM division, which it acquired in 2015. Read the release.

Drama Club

Food fights keep breaking out in the Trade Group High School cafeteria in the wake of the ANA’s agency transparency report. The ANA threw some shade at agencies by telling them how to do their job [AdExchanger coverage]. Then the 4A’s was all like, “Thanks, but no thanks.” And then the ANA was like, “Yeah, I double-dog dare you to say that to my face at my party this fall.” It’s been less fun than the “Kim & Kanye vs. T-Swift” Snapchat feud, but pretty good for press release theatrics. More at Ad Age.

Viacom Upfront

Although Viacom’s upfront showing wasn’t quite as triumphant as NBC’s double-digit increases, it did manage to pull “mid-to-high” single-digit growth in CPMs and total volume of inventory committed during the upfronts. “More advertisers committed earlier rather than waiting for scatter when inventory is scarce,” CEO Philippe Dauman told investors on Thursday’s earnings call. The company also called out “35-45 Viacom Vantage data deals” with marketers during the period. More than half of those deals rely on comScore metrics as opposed to Nielsen, signaling a shift to alternative currencies, Dauman said. More.

But Wait, There’s More!