Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
What, Me Worried?
Google’s planned elimination of third-party cookies has big brands revamping their data strategies, but some aren’t too worried about the looming restrictions that won’t allow individual ad targeting. Per the Wall Street Journal, Bacardi has expressed confidence in its ability to build its brand and sell products even without access to individual ad tracking and targeting technology that Google plans to nix next year. That’s because Bacardi ran a campaign last October promoting Bombay Sapphire in the United Kingdom that took 10,000 anonymized identities of people who had visited the gin brand’s distillery or website, and sent them offers like promotional emails or Instagram ads promising drink recipes and early access to new products. The result? A click-through rate around 9% higher than previous campaigns that relied on common but now endangered targeting methods, such as using data from third-party sources. The new campaign also saw a 14% increase in cost efficiency as measured by a cost-per-click metric. Other brands, like Clorox and Cadillac, are also prepping not only for Google’s changes but Apple’s privacy restrictions as well. Read on.
Listen Up
Podcasts are all the rage these days and the IAB will let the industry know how much of a hot commodity they are at its sixth annual Podcast Upfronts presentation next month, after a year in which the format continued to grow despite quarantine conditions. Adweek reports that the lineup includes major players in the space like NPR, iHeartMedia, Stitcher and Pandora as well as the podcasting arms of legacy media companies like ESPN and ViacomCBS. Podcasting listenership grew by 17% overall last year, and about 28% of the US population over the age of 12 now count themselves as weekly podcast listeners. The IAB also plans to release a revenue report that will help publishers understand how they stack up against the rest of the industry and identify new monetization opportunities sorted by ad type, category and content vertical.
CPG Mixer
Verizon Media is giving CPG marketers a boost during a “tricky time” in the space by partnering with shopper intelligence company Catalina. Why? In a blog post, Verizon Media said that CPG marketers have long struggled to connect the dots between the impact of their digital campaigns and the metric that matters most: sales. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated that challenge by disrupting the typical purchase cycle and radically altering consumer behavior. Advertisers, of course, have struggled to keep up as they observed new trends in real time. Per Ad Age, Verizon Media has reached a deal to bring individual shopper card data from Catalina into programmatic digital ad buys for packaged-goods marketers, giving it the first demand-side platform powered by offline and online sales data from Catalina’s 236 million shopper cards. That will allow brands to link in-store and online shopping to digital ads in real-time by matching Catalina’s sales data directly with Verizon Media’s identity graph. Read on.
But Wait, There’s More!
The brewing battle between Google and the ad tech industry to replace the cookie has taken another step with the launch of two distinct offerings from rival camps. [Campaign]
Spotify’s latest acquisition — this time of Clubhouse rival Locker Room — could make it a one-stop shop for podcast production. [Business Insider]
Inside Facebook’s push to convince small businesses of Apple anti-tracking doom. [Digiday]
How Google went from being a tech darling to an alleged monopoly. [Vox]
Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy faces an in-depth competition probe in the UK. [CNBC]
Comcast is thinking about pulling Universal’s movies from HBO Max and Netflix in order to boost NBCU’s Peacock. [Bloomberg]
You’re Hired!
AnalyticsIQ hires Curtis Marshall as SVP of business data partnerships. [Martech Series]
Comcast Cable’s Effectv hires John Brauer to oversee insights and analytics. [Release]
