Right Media Exposé; LA Gears Up For Snap IPO

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

Memory Lane

In the wake of Right Media’s 2007 sale to Yahoo, there was an “ongoing war with the Right Media change agenda versus many on the Yahoo side,” according to Megan Pagliuca, who had a front-row seat to the culture clash. In an interview with Gartner Research VP Martin Kihn, Pagliuca (currently CEO of Accuen) recalls trying to convince senior Yahoo media sellers to play nice with the exchange. “We built business cases and economic models that showed Yahoo inventory was being arbitraged – specifically, inventory bought in class one by smart ad networks and then sold at a higher price on the exchange. In some cases, ad networks [were] selling the Yahoo inventory back to Yahoo itself at a higher price. We also showed they could make more money by smart decisioning on price floors and yield management through the Right Media SSP.” Read the Q&A.

Nouveau Riche

As Los Angeles prepares for a spurt of tech millionaires following Snap’s IPO, real estate agents, lawyers and wealth managers are buying up search and Facebook ads targeted to Snap employees and equity holders, reports Katie Benner at The New York Times. “Entrepreneurs have strong emotional ties to their companies and their stock, but things don’t always go right,” said one such marketer, Howard Rowen of Bank of America in Los Angeles. “It’s hard to convince them that they need to invest in something other than their own company.” More.

Clash Of The Titans

Walmart shares jumped Monday after the world’s largest retailer reported its third consecutive quarter of double-digit online sales growth. Walmart is finally “playing offense,” says Baird Equity research analyst Peter Benedict. The boost was driven by its $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet.com during that period. Three-quarters of Walmart shoppers also bought from Amazon over the holidays, up from two-thirds in 2014, reports Bloomberg. Growth is good, but Walmart (and every other brick-and-mortar player) is still under pressure to counter Amazon’s relentless shopper loyalty program. More.

Super App

It’s the age of app cannibalization, according to a Gartner survey of mobile users in the US, China and the UK. Standalone app usage fell 3% and social media app usage fell 2% year over year, according to the study. Shopping and personal assistant apps have grown 4% each thanks to trends like voice assistants and messaging platforms. Dominant platforms like WeChat in China have pioneered the model of a one-stop-shop app where consumers can do everything from message friends to order food. Gartner research director Jessica Ekholm puts her money on Facebook to become the WeChat of the West based on its acquisition strategies. “It’s probably not going to be as quick as it was in China, because of the[ir] mobile-first approach, but it will come … slowly but surely over the next few years.” TechCrunch has more.

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