Wal-Mart Expands Ad Business; Facebook Adds Foot Traffic Retargeting

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

Big Box Analytics

Walmart is angling to be the next big ecommerce and ad platform. The retailer grew its ecommerce business more than 60% this year (though largely through acquisition) and expanded the number of ads from third-party sellers on its site, CNBC reports. Walmart is selling advertisers on its campaign insights, which combine online and offline sales data, says Ed Yruma, an analyst at KeyBanc. “There’s a lot happening within physical stores, so being able to merge those two data sets will be incredibly important going forward,” he said. More. But as an ad platform, Walmart pales in comparison to its biggest rival, Amazon, which has a $3 billion ad business growing 50% per year.

Minding The Store

In other Facebook news, Audience Network has begun allowing brands with real-world locations to retarget people online after they’ve visited a store, according to a screenshot tweeted out Friday by Moshe Isaacian, digital marketing coordinator at Crowd Control Digital. A Facebook spokesperson tells Tim Peterson at Marketing Land the company has nothing to announce right now. Store tracking could lend new heft to Facebook’s Custom Audiences, which already includes social media, apps, websites and CRM data. More.

Trojan App

In other Facebook news, the company launched a stealth app in China through a local company seemingly unaffiliated with the platform. The app, called Colorful Balloons, mimics the look and feel of Facebook’s photo-sharing app, Moments. Chinese consumers can access it through WeChat. Colorful Balloons will give Facebook some insight into how Chinese consumers interact digitally. It also demonstrates how far American tech companies will go to crack the heavily censored Chinese market. “We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country in different ways,” Facebook said in a statement in The New York Times.

Hurry Up And Wait

Verizon’s online TV streaming service was planned for summer, moved back to fall and now seems likely to miss that mark, reports Bloomberg. Verizon is still working through the pricing structure and video-streaming technology, and major networks and content providers “are reluctant to come onboard without such specifics.” The Verizon package, similar to incumbent online services like Hulu, DirecTV and YouTube, would rely on network content from CBS and Disney’s ESPN. Although Disney’s decision to pull content from Netflix foreshadows a potential wrench in Verizon’s offering. More.

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