Meredith Ramps Up Affiliate Revenue; GDPR Probe Dropped

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The Shopping News

Meredith generated $400 million in retail sales last year due to commerce integrations across a dozen of its sites, working with 400 retailers to post 40 million products. To expand its shoppable integrations, Meredith acquired Linfield Media, the six-person affiliate marketing company that runs PromoCodesForYou. “Our broader commerce strategy is to connect consumers to retailers, and provide a shoppable integration in the customer journey to influence sales,” Andy Wilson, SVP of revenue, exclusively told AdExchanger. Meredith readers will start to see promo codes across the shoppable content they peruse. Transparency will be a differentiator, Wilson said. “We are extremely retailer-friendly,” he said. Partners will see where and how promo codes drive consumers to buy. “The data we provide is fully transparent in terms of performance.”

Consent Confusion

French data protection authorities have dropped an investigation of Vectaury, a mobile demand-side platform. The French CNIL put Vectaury on notice in October 2018 for violating GDPR by failing to gain proper consent to collect data through its SDK and in bid requests. At the time of the probe, Vectaury had collected data on 67.6 million people from more than 32,000 apps, The Register reports. Because Vectaury based its consent management process on the IAB Europe’s framework, the investigation threatened to undermine the digital ad ecosystem’s approach to GDPR compliance. But after Vectaury was able to get its mobile app partners to tweak their consent management processes, CNIL dropped the case. Privacy advocates are unhappy with the outcome. “Until CNIL engages with this question, it will have to keep a close eye on every Vectaury out there,” says Johnny Ryan, chief policy officer at privacy-centric browser Brave. “And that is not practical, because there are hundreds, and perhaps thousands.” More.

Fits And Starts

Instagram will fund creators to make content for IGTV, its bet on long-form video that hasn’t picked up much traction with users. Despite an extravagant launch last year, many influencers aren’t using IGTV, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But the platform is adjusting. Content discovery in the core app is easier than it was, and IGTV has a personalized feed in the Explore tab. “It’s hard to appreciate how big of a bet this is, and how much of a brand new ecosystem we’re trying to establish,” says Ashley Yuki, head of interests product at Instagram. More.

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