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Why The Grocery Chain Albertsons In-Housed Its Retail Media Network And What It Plans To Do Next AdExplainer: What Is Advanced TV? T-Mobile Rebrands Its Ad Biz And Navigates The Perilous Line Between Programmatic And Privacy Why Sam’s Club’s Media Biz Rebranded From Advertising To ‘Member Access’ NBCUniversal Hails iSpot’s Cross-Platform Currency Pilot Results Hard Rock Brings A Cost-Conscious Mindset To The Hard-Charging Sports Betting App Market “I Am Gen Z”: How The Youngest Generation Is Braving Technological Submersion CTV Is Not Immune To Ad Fraud – And The Industry Needs To Tighten Its Standards Volta Charges Up Its Ad Business As Retailer Media Networks Hit Their Stride

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Commerce

Why The Grocery Chain Albertsons In-Housed Its Retail Media Network And What It Plans To Do Next

By James Hercher

Friday, June 24th, 2022 – 11:16 am

Evan Hovorka, head of retail media products at Albertsons, was hired by the grocery store chain nine months ago after a 17-year stretch at Target.

He joined Albertsons shortly after it added former Target exec Kristi Argyilan as retail media SVP. Argyilan came aboard to build out an ad platform business akin to Roundel, the media network group she previously led at Target.

She started making big changes to the Albertsons ad business right off the bat. In November, Albertsons began to wind down its more than five-year relationship with third-party vendor Quotient, which until then had supported its retail media, digital coupons, online ad attribution and agency services. Why? To launch its own in-house advertising business, of course.

Albertsons exited the Quotient partnership in February after releasing its own managed service and self-serve platform offerings.

“It’s really about owning the tech stack and the product vision,” Hovorka said.

Gaming

PepsiCo Prioritizes Publisher Partnerships Over Programmatic For In-Game Marketing

By Anthony Vargas

Friday, June 24th, 2022 – 12:45 am

Advertisers are starting to see video games as an opportunity to reach audiences that have abandoned traditional media channels like TV.

But gamers can be protective of their digital spaces and tend to be wary of brands that try to inject messaging into what they see as their refuge from other ad-saturated environments.

That’s why PepsiCo’s video game marketing philosophy revolves around gaining a gamer’s trust through three main methods: being authentic, adding value and creating a consistent presence in the gaming community.

These priorities have helped PepsiCo integrate its family of brands into highly sought-after video game fandoms, such as Call of Duty and NBA 2K, PepsiCo’s head of esports and gaming, Paul Mascali, told AdExchanger.

The Sell Sider

Mobile Game Advertisers Created The Playbook – And Now Consoles Can Follow

By AdExchanger Guest Columnist

Friday, June 24th, 2022 – 12:35 am

Jeff SueGM, Americas

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community.

Today’s column is written by Jeff Sue, GM Americas at Mintegral.

Recent news that Microsoft and Sony are both bringing ads to their free-to-play (F2P) games has left the industry buzzing. But it seemed inevitable.

It’s no secret that F2P on mobile has struck a fine balance between satiating gamers’ need for engaging gameplay and advertisers’ mission to grow their audience. Mobile has created a blueprint. Now, consoles will follow suit.

Mobile paves the way

Cloud gaming is not new. But so far, there are few true success stories. Cloud gaming subscriptions to services like Google’s Stadia have been lackluster. Sign-ups fell short of Google’s 2020 end-of-year goal of 1 million monthly active users by approximately 25%. This is, at least in part, due to its lack of investment in first-party games.

Comic Strip

Comic: Summer WFH Dream vs. Reality

By Nate Neal

Friday, June 24th, 2022 – 12:15 am

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Ad Exchange News

Shopify Isn’t All In On Ads (Yet); Universal Music Joins The Media Network Parade

By AdExchanger

Friday, June 24th, 2022 – 12:03 am

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

Shopify Is ‘Just Browsing’ Ads

Shopify held its twice-annual road map update event this week. Shopify Editions, as the get-together is called, offered up a handful of tantalizing tidbits for industry observers awaiting news of a consolidated Shopify ad platform.

In May, there was the launch of Shopify Audiences, which packages audience segments based on purchase intent signals across Shopify’s network. Shopify isn’t the ad platform; it pushes audience segments to Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, et al.

It’s also increasing incentives for its Shop app, a stand-alone ecommerce service.

But Shopify has only tentatively waded into advertising and launching its own ecommerce marketplace. The Shop app, for instance, is framed as a personal shopping assistant, not an open ecommerce marketplace.

There’s a reason Shopify is hands-off on advertising and has no private-label products. An ad platform is lucrative and the opportunity is ripe. Shopify collects payment data that makes the hearts of mobile marketers and DTC merchants flutter.

But Shopify is reluctant to step into the consumer decision-maker role. Because Shopify is the technology behind scores of fashion merchants, when the company carries each of their products in a marketplace or an ad platform, it must choose who gets customers and who doesn’t – and it’s not ready to do that yet.

Podcast

The Big Story: Our 200th Episode

By Sarah Sluis

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 – 11:31 am

If there is one constant in ad tech, it’s change.

When the AdExchanger team recorded its first episode four years ago, ad tech was in the middle of one of its acquisition sprees. IPG had just bought Acxiom Marketing Services.

Agencies were buying up data platforms as they sought to differentiate and help clients with their first-party data. (Whether a data broker counts as a first-party data provider is something else we debate.) Four years later, have those acquisitions provided the return that the agencies hoped for?

In the case of IPG and Acxiom, the answer seems to be yes, at least according to what’s in their public earnings reports.

Then, we explore algorithms that police advertising algorithms for bias. If you take an algorithm and have it create lookalikes of your customers using your first-party data, turns out that data could exacerbate bias. And prospecting results can be more biased, and more myopic. Algorithms can also end up skewing an audience demographically, narrowing an audience in ways marketers may not intend, or desire. But is AI just a catch-all solution for all that ails ad tech?

AdExplainer: What Is Advanced TV?

By Alyssa Boyle

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 – 8:30 am

The ad industry has lots of similar-sounding terms to describe how content reaches viewers – advanced TV, addressable TV, convergent TV. But what those terms actually mean and how they differ is another story – well, this one, actually.

Although addressable, advanced and convergent TV might sound like synonyms, they are distinct concepts. Think of advanced TV as the umbrella term with addressable and convergent TV as specific techniques.

“Advanced TV” refers to anything that is not traditional, over-the-air broadcast TV. It represents the “move beyond demos to more precisely distribute, target and measure” TV content across households and devices, said Jes Santoro, SVP of advanced TV and video at Cadent.

In other words, advanced TV reflects the broader move away from legacy television and toward cross-platform content distribution and using data to inform campaigns.

“There are a few flavors of this change,” said Tracey Scheppach, CEO of video marketing consultancy Matter More Media. “But it really comes down to two things: the way content is distributed and the amount of data that’s captured.”

OPINION: AdExchanger content studio

Brands Should Double Down On The Growing Presence Of Women in Sports

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 – 8:00 am

Sponsored post byJenna MielnickiSenior Vice President & Head of Marketing SolutionsLEARFIELD

Aflac Launches First-Ever TikTok Campaign To Engage The Youngest Generation

By Alyssa Boyle

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 – 5:00 am

Every marketer and their mother wants to understand how teenagers congregate and communicate online. Even insurance companies are trying their hand at reaching this younger demographic.

Aflac launched its first-ever campaign on TikTok this week, dubbed #DuckVibes, to engage younger consumers with what it considers a mid-funnel-focused strategy, Head of Marketing Garth Knuston told AdExchanger.

The new campaign, which will run throughout the summer, uses catchy music, lyrics and visuals involving the eponymous Aflac duck to encourage “duets,” a split-screen feature TikTokers use to retroactively “respond to” other creators’ videos, he said. (In Twitter parlance, it would be a quoted tweet; on Instagram, it’s a shared story.)

Aflac’s core target audience spans the ages 25-54. Knowing that people are often unenrolled from their parents’ insurance once they’re 26 years old (that’s the rule for national health care), the brand hopes to start a relationship with prospective customers who will soon exit their prime mooching years.

On TV and Video

Streaming M&A Means New Monetization Opportunities And Measurement Tactics

By AdExchanger Guest Columnist

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 – 12:35 am

Matthew PapaSVP, Business & Corporate Development

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.

Today’s column is by Matt Papa, SVP of business and corporate development at Captify.

Global brands have always used M&A as a not-so-secret way to remain competitive.

The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets before launching their streaming service Disney+. AT&T acquired Time Warner’s media brands (Warner Bros., Turner Television, HBO and CNN) before offloading everything to Discovery.

But this industry-shaking consolidation doesn’t end there.

The emergence of the streaming era has led to a transformative shift in media and entertainment. Amazon recently spent $8.5 billion to acquire MGM’s vast movie library, some of which is available on its ad-supported Freevee service.

Comcast, Fox and Paramount have seen a similar market opportunity, acquiring ad-supported channels like Xumo, Tubi and Pluto, respectively. Roku is bidding for a stake in linear channel Starz after striking a multiyear theatrical output deal with its owner Lionsgate. ViacomCBS also rebranded and moved its content to Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery intends to merge its streaming apps into a single destination bundle.