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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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Platforms

Ready To Advertise In The Metaverse? (No, You’re Not)

By Allison Schiff

Monday, June 27th, 2022 – 11:01 am

How should brands think about advertising in the metaverse?

The question is a little hard to answer when there’s no consensus about what exactly the metaverse is or what it might become.

You don’t need a headset, but you do. It’s like a video game, but not. Something about VR, but also something about AR. It’s an immersive virtual world. Scratch that – it’s multiple immersive virtual worlds that don’t talk to each other yet, but will.

In his 1993 cyberpunk novel, “Snow Crash,” author Neal Stephenson first coined the term “metaverse,” which he defined rather broadly as a world made out of code.

But certain brands and social platforms seem keen on defining it as a world where people will spend thousands of dollars to kit out their 3D avatars in luxury gear (just not pants, because there’s no point right now).

Digital TV and Video

Pirate’s Booty Sails Into CTV And Digital To Engage Co-Viewing Audiences

By Alyssa Boyle

Monday, June 27th, 2022 – 4:45 am

Pirate’s Booty has long traded on its high level of brand awareness, which it’s been able to achieve despite rarely advertising on TV.

Or doing much paid advertising at all, for that matter, said Mark Chu, director of marketing at Amplify Snack Brands, which was acquired by Hershey in 2018. Later that year, Hershey bought Pirate’s Booty and placed it under the Amplify umbrella.

Before the acquisition, Pirate’s Booty mainly focused on the “slow and steady everyday managing of the business,” Chu said, including product innovation, packaging and distribution growth. But that changed after Hershey added the brand to its snack portfolio.

“The acquisition flipped our thinking in terms of what else we can do to drive growth,” Chu said.

In other words, ahoy advertising.

Now, Pirate’s Booty is tweaking its creative messaging to reach both parents and their kids – rather than just parents – in a co-viewing situation through digital and video channels.

On TV and Video

Marriott’s Media Network Is A Billion-Dollar Opportunity

By AdExchanger Guest Columnist

Monday, June 27th, 2022 – 12:35 am

Humphrey HoManaging Director, AmericasHylink Digital

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

Today’s column is by Humphrey Ho, managing director, Americas, Hylink Digital.

The Dow may be down, but Marriott’s stock is up 6.7% from a year ago. And it shows no sign of losing momentum. To what does it owe this success?

Much of the continued growth will stem from the hotel group’s debut of its very own ad network.

Once launched, the new media network would allow advertisers to target Marriott guests with relevant ads on their app and through guest room TVs using customers’ profiles, search history, and reservations as a first-party data source – something that has become an increasingly scarce resource in the post-cookie era.

And the impact will be massive.

Ad Exchange News

Lawmakers Call On FTC To Regulate Apple And Google; Biz Journalism Bounces Back

By AdExchanger

Monday, June 27th, 2022 – 12:03 am

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

Supremely Disturbing

Apple and Google (although primarily Apple) have been roiling developers with anti-tracking policies and initiatives, like the AppTrackingTransparency framework on iOS and the Android Privacy Sandbox.

But that hasn’t kept them out of the regulatory spotlight. Au contraire.

Lawmakers are calling for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google and Apple over allegations of mobile tracking.

On Friday, four Democratic senators (Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, Sara Jacobs and Cory Booker) wrote a letter to FTC Commissioner Lina Khan calling the mobile OS duopoly’s respective solutions too little too late, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Mobile identifiers are ostensibly anonymous, but “it’s often possible to easily identify a particular customer in a data set of ‘anonymous’ location records by looking to see where they sleep at night,” the letter reads. Identifiers, even if stripped of personal information, can still be used to identify a particular device and, from there, that device’s owner.

The senators argue this constitutes “unfair and deceptive practices,” the legal cue for the FTC to step up.

The senators also warned of new implications for mobile identifiers now that the Supreme Court has officially overturned Roe v. Wade. “Prosecutors in states where abortion becomes illegal will soon be able to obtain warrants for location information about anyone who has visited an abortion provider,” they wrote.

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?