Commerce

The retail media craze kicked into hyperdrive in the past year. Because of the pandemic, the number of people ordering groceries online for the first time skyrocketed, but the trend was already underway. The rush of retailers into the programmatic platform business meant they tended to follow the playbook laid out by the by the […]

Instacart is at the forefront of a movement among data-driven companies over the past two years to launch ancillary ad platform businesses, including direct competitors like GoPuff, partner competitors like Kroger and unrelated product or payment companies. The sailing hasn’t always been smooth, but the company is committed to building a major ad tech business.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hard Of Hearing Podcasters are rushing to add programmatic to their bag of monetization tricks. But they’re confronting familiar issues for publishers when software decides what ads to run and where, The Verge reports. An ad for HBO’s “The Sex Lives of College […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Criss-Cross Media Measurement CTV ad dollars are expected to double by 2026, according to GroupM’s most recent industry forecast – which means ad tech firms with advanced measurement capabilities could be looking to make acquisitions this year, Business Insider reports. Measurement companies have their […]

The biggest US tech companies – Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft – are often lumped together. But their ad platform businesses have distinct dynamics, and each was affected by the trials and tribulations of 2021 in very different ways. Although Apple’s privacy changes took a knife to Facebook and a hammer to Google, for example, […]

Keeping Track Third-party trackers were hosed by GDPR, right?  Perhaps not.  A University of Oxford study found that third-party trackers in Google Play and Apple iOS apps remain relatively unchanged. “The same handful of third-party tracking companies have similar prevalence and prominence,” according to the Internet Policy Review journal. The number of apps with zero […]

Kinesso, IPG’s marketing intelligence brand, has developed nine APIs for its Kanvas Developer Toolset, the agency announced Thursday. The APIs offered through Kanvas unify the various software tools used to manage advertising campaigns. For example, an advertiser using the Trade Desk and IPG-owned Acxiom would be able to see insights from Acxiom audiences from within […]

Is Criteo building an “anti-Google machine” with its proposed $380 million acquisition of IPONWEB? Criteo CEO Megan Clarken and Todd Parsons, chief product officer, weigh in and explain the vision. In short: the open web needs a hero.

Retailers and big retail brands typically embark on Q4 with their plan firmly in place. Pricing and promotions, inventory deliveries and expected sales are all known factors. Companies test, learn and implement during the first nine months of the year and by the holidays they should be riding on rails. And tech providers oblige. The […]

Amazon The Impervious Google and Facebook are reeling from data privacy changes. Tim Cook warned investors that Apple underestimated part shortages and would not meet demand until next year. Macy’s slimmed its store inventory. Disney’s production schedules are delayed by months and even years. And Amazon is – doing great. The ongoing supply-chain drama, COVID-19 fallout […]

Bolt From The Blue Twitter Blue, Twitter’s $3-per-month subscription service, was met with applause this month by digital media and news publishers thrilled to see a tech platform cut them a rev share. Participating publishers offer ad-free articles on Twitter’s in-app browser and earn a share of the Twitter Blue subscription pool in return. The […]

The Poisoned Apple Apple has been secretly buying app download ads on behalf of apps as a way to secure iOS subscription fees in perpetuity, according to a Forbes report. Google won’t delete the ads, though they’re placed without the knowledge or consent of the app developers, including Bumble, Tinder, HBO, Masterclass and Babbel, the […]

Whose Free Lunch? Amazon may rebrand IMDb TV, its free ad-supported streaming service, because employees fear the clunky name is a drag on sign-ups, The Information reports. The waffling between IMDb TV, Freedive or some variation of Free TV is amusing. But perhaps the most interesting morsel comes at the very end. “While the business […]

The Location Equation Location data companies have seen an uptick in inquiries from government officials and public health groups, The Washington Post reports. It’s no surprise – health officials and local governments had to track the effects of quarantine measures as well as next-order impacts on public services, such as transportation. Though the applications are […]

The twentieth century saw very little disruption for category-leading brands. Del Monte fruit, Nabisco biscuits, Gold Medal flour, Sherwin-Williams paint, Gillette razors, Lipton tea, Ivory soap – across practically every consumer business, America’s top brands in 1923 were the same category leaders 60 years later. But nearly one century on, those rankings are starting to […]

Pokémon Oreos, limited edition Sour Patch Kids, Heinz Halloween outfits and McDonald’s BTS meals. As brands go all-in on ecommerce and digital data, there’s been a notable recent uptick in their efforts to acquire first-party ecom data by dangling personalized or limited-edition products. Savvy kids might even call them thirsty, even as they enter their […]

Gartner’s fourth annual Magic Quadrant for buy-side ad tech in a nutshell: Keep your eye on Amazon. Amazon is ascending into the stratosphere, where it’s now rubbing shoulders in the “leader” category alongside Google and The Trade Desk. Rounding out the leader quadrant you’ll find Adobe, Amobee, Adform and Mediaocean. MediaMath, Criteo, Verizon Media (ahem, […]

Get your mop and vacuum ready, because the clean room craze is only getting started. Amazon on Tuesday launched the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), its cloud-based clean room product, from beta. Marketers can now integrate AMC with the Amazon demand-side platform (DSP) for campaign measurement and analytics. AMC is built on the Amazon Web Services […]

Spend Money To Make Money The proliferation of companies launching ancillary advertising businesses is a boon to total ad spend. Buy-now-pay-later players Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay and PayPal spent a combined $52.45 million on TV, print and digital media from January to September this year, Business Insider reports. That’s up 130% from last year. BNPL companies […]

Do Me A Favor Amazon told Congress in 2019 that it doesn’t favor Amazon-owned brands in search results. But that isn’t credible to sellers, who time and again see Amazon rivals shoot into the top three search results immediately. A former Amazon employee told The Markup that Amazon reserved a top search spot for new […]

Platform Peril Seemingly every grocery chain now has a programmatic platform, not to mention Lowe’s, Home Depot, Instacart, GoPuff and buy-now-pay-later companies like Afterpay and Klarna, to be joined soon by Uber, perhaps Shopify and who knows who else. Many of these companies – the BNPLs and all the mobile app-based businesses – got into […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Big Game Amazon CEO Andy Jessy (Jeff who?) issued a bold statement at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle this week. “In the case of games, we have a belief that that could end up being the largest category in entertainment over a long period […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Outside Inc. CEO Robin Thurston is very aware of subscription fatigue. At a time when streaming platforms are working to boost their subscriber numbers with bundled ad-free and ad-supported channel packages, Outside TV is being used in part as a vehicle to entice […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Ecommerce Byte? TikTok parent company ByteDance is looking to take on Amazon and Alibaba with its own global ecommerce platform, Business Insider reports. The company hopes to expand its online shopping platform outside of China, which could launch as a stand-alone app or within […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Paul Gubbins, VP, CTV Strategy, Publica. While definitions of what actually constitutes a connected TV (CTV) impression are still being widely debated, brand safety companies discover new cases of fraud in streaming on a regular […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Instacart Exit Seth Dallaire, out! Instacart’s ad chief is jumping over to Walmart as chief revenue officer amid a shakeup in the grocery delivery service’s executive ranks, Business Insider reports. Dallaire will work to scale Walmart Connect, the retail giant’s ad platform unit – […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Kii To Success? As the ad industry struggles to come up with solutions to its identity crisis, Kinesso, IPG’s data and technology unit, claims it has the key … ahem, the Kii. That’s what Kinesso is calling its new identity offering. In a world […]

Inmar Intelligence is adding mobile to its cart. On Thursday, the retailer-focused tech and data platform reached an agreement to acquire mobile ad platform Aki Technologies to take advantage of the high-growth retail media category. Aaron Kechley, Inmar’s GM of media and SVP of strategy, declined to share a deal price. But he did elaborate […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The OOH F.U. ROI Macy’s is suing its landlord, the Kaufman Organization, to prevent the building owner from placing an Amazon billboard above the department chain’s flagship Herald Square location in New York City. Macy’s has had its own brand on the billboard for […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Rakuten Rewards, formerly Ebates, is an 800-pound gorilla in the affiliate marketing business. But what’s the point of being biggest if nobody wants to be in the affiliate business? Since its acquisition by the Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten and […]