Retailers Bid For Boxed; Disney's Board Sheds Facebook And Twitter Execs

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By The Board

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will not return to Disney’s board this year because “it has become increasingly difficult for them to avoid conflicts,” Disney said in a statement. Sandberg had been on the board since 2010, and Dorsey since 2013. As social platforms develop streaming video and live programming and even bid on sports broadcast rights, Disney can’t justify giving Facebook and Twitter execs such visibility into its business. However, not all tech presents a conflict. Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz has already been named as a replacement. More at The Wall Street Journal.

Unboxed

Several major grocers are in talks to acquire Boxed, an online bulk-order ecommerce market (think Sam’s Club of the internet), reports Alex Konrad for Forbes. The offers being considered are reportedly between $325 million and $500 million, with Kroger the likeliest potential buyer, and Target, Costco and Aldi’s each considering a bid as well. Boxed represents an ecommerce rethink of retail trade marketing, where the ecom market offers exclusive opportunities to be the only brand available in a category. Considering the omnichannel growth Walmart has attributed to its $3.3 billion Jet.com acquisition, major independent ecommerce markets are likely fielding serious inquiries right now. More.

From Pillar To Post

MinnPost, a Minnesota news site, got rid of its third-party ad partners and now opens unfilled inventory to local nonprofits at fire sale rates. Previously, that space would be snapped up by “gambling ads, teeth whiteners, and things like that,” MinnPost ad operations director Brian Perry tells the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. “Our audience didn’t like them; they’re intrusive sometimes, they run these nonstop animations. And they’re served by some third party that you’re never really sure where they’re coming from.” MinnPost would make about three times more ad revenue with a network partner, Perry estimates, but it’s harder to quantify the full-price subscribers and membership donations it could have lost due to shoddy ads. More.

Tower Of Babel

A year-long effort by the IAB to standardize data lingo has entered a public comment phase. The OpenData 1.0 standard “impacts companies who receive data reports from sources such as ad tech vendors, data management platforms, and other partners,” the IAB says. Among other benefits, it will alleviate the manual work of standardizing Excel spreadsheets and API connections. Read the IAB’s overview. Committee member David Smith tells Adweek, “By the IAB taking on the centralization of a standard nomenclature, it gives the industry the ability to either standardize for certain names or to create pointers that says this means this and this means that.” More.

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