Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Stores Of Value
From regional chains to the largest department and grocery stores, seemingly every retailer is in the retail media network business.
Retail ad spend forecasts have leapt to $25 billion and more. Except those numbers mostly track Amazon’s growth, plus a relatively marginal contribution by every other retailer.
Now that retailers are in the advertising platform market, there’s an ad tech feeding frenzy to lock in accounts early in the retail growth phase.
Uber just introduced new sponsored placements in Uber Eats, which CPG brands can use to target people as they’re finishing an order.
PepsiCo, Uber Eats’ pilot brand, has always targeted shoppers at the cash register – with in-the-moment buys like chips and beverages. That hasn’t changed, except now Uber Eats checkout is the cash register (where a buyer can be enticed with add-ons).
Criteo won the ad tech contract for Uber Eats, per the release, in addition to the Best Buy Ads third-party ad tech prize last September.
Also this week, Instacart Carrot Ads, Instacart’s ad tech suite that retailers license to set up ad platforms for their own sites and apps, locked in specialty food chain Sprouts.
Working The Working Groups
Amazon and Google laid off tens of thousands of employees in the past six months or so, including from their ad platform tech and sales groups. But Big Tech still has a voracious appetite for execs who know the ad tech industry and the key working groups, mainly in the IAB Tech Lab and W3C, where ad industry standards are forged.
Kelly MacLean, a longtime leader of monetization product engineering groups at Meta, was just poached by Amazon as VP of the DSP business, Insider reports. Before that, she was an IAB board member for a year and a half.
Google, meanwhile, hired Alex Cone as senior product manager for Privacy Sandbox last month. Cone was an IAB designate from AppNexus, where he was director of product management, then spent two years in leadership roles at the IAB Tech Lab.
Google also added Victor Wong, previously of Meta and Walmart, to lead product management for advertising technology products within the Privacy Sandbox.
Who Wins The Silver Screen?
YouTube and the broadcast TV industry have sparred for years over what constitutes “premium video” or what is considered “TV advertising.”
That came to a head recently, as broadcasters formed a united joint industry committee (JIC) to settle on standards for TV and online video ad measurement.
YouTube is user-generated content and mostly short vids monetized by even shorter ads of six seconds. Television networks with nationally branded programs and 30-second commercials feel different enough that they don’t want inventory in the same bucket.
YouTube contends that much of its inventory, especially what it packages as premium, can actually have higher production value than TV or streaming.
However, “one startling statistic shows how YouTube is now unequivocally the king of TV,” The Information reports, with 45% viewership rate on actual TVs.
Google and the broadcasters may bandy about the definition of TV, but viewers set their own standards. More and more, the thing they’re watching on the TV screen is … YouTube.
But Wait, There’s More!
Agency relationships with Amazon evolve as they adapt to retail media opportunities. [Digiday]
“We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”: How open source generative AI and chat software could swamp Microsoft and Google. [SemiAnalysis]
EBay’s chief product officer on growing the legacy marketplace. [Modern Retail]
Apple has put its product supply chain in the hands of the Chinese government. [Financial Times]
First-Party Sets, a much-awaited Chrome Privacy Sandbox proposal, will begin its testing rollout with the next Chrome update. [Developer’s blog]
IPG’s Magna signs up for Comscore’s local TV ratings data. [TV Tech]
You’re Hired!
ThinkAnalytics names Jo Kinsella, co-founder of TVSquared, as strategic advisor. [B+C]
Outbrain announces many new senior leadership appointments. [release]
The Atlantic hires Tyler Watson as EVP of marketing. [release]
Emily Plunkett Fleischer is US director of AdGreen, a new role and organization funded by Ad Net Zero’s founding supporters. [release]
