Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
That’s Settled
Disney reached a deal with Amazon to carry Disney Plus on Fire TV sets. The two companies were at an impasse on a distribution deal because Amazon was demanding a substantial percentage of the media giant’s ad revenue, The Wall Street Journal reports. The ecommerce giant generally starts by asking programmers for a 40% cut of ad sales, which often gets negotiated down to somewhere between 20-30%. Google, for example, kept YouTube TV, its skinny bundle of live channels, off Fire TV until last month, when the two finally reached a deal through which Google allows Amazon to carry YouTube TV and Amazon’s Prime Video service now syncs with Chromecast. But YouTube inventory is not included in Amazon’s recent Fire TV programmatic integrations, making it the only third-party Fire TV content that’s gated from Amazon’s DSP partners, The Trade Desk and dataxu. Disney Plus is less complicated because it’s an ad-free service (for now, at least). More.
On The Upswing
The public mar tech sector is up 72% in the last year, according to the 2019 State of Digital Marketing report from LUMA Partners, which presented its research Thursday at its Digital Marketing Summit in Menlo Park, California. Even ad tech beat the overall Nasdaq – and not just on price performance, according to LUMA Partners’ Mark Greenbaum. “Ad tech traded at 3.3X,” he said. “The days of the sub-1X ad tech multiples are hopefully behind us.” M&A has been particularly strong in mar tech, led by the marketing clouds, private equity, digital giants like Google and, surprisingly, even a few brands, such as McDonald’s, as they look to build out their own capabilities. The 2019 State of Digital Marketing report will be available on LUMA’s website in the coming days.
Ad Tech’s New Exit
Despite optimism over at LUMA, VC pools are drying up for ad tech and the public market remains skeptical. But that’s actually leading to a new exit opportunity for ad tech: brands snapping up the platforms that power their businesses. But unlike advertising and mar tech acquisitions of days past, now marketers are looking for solutions that can help them deliver on personalization rather than bolting together a programmatic stack, Digiday reports. When McDonald’s bought the analytics platform Dynamic Yield in March, the goal was to be able to serve up a more personalized restaurant experience for users. In a similar vein, Walmart acquired native ad server Polymorph Labs in April to develop its owned media business, while Mastercard bought SessionM to beef up its in-house data science team. “Brands and retailers at risk of being disintermediated by Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are actively fighting back,” said Julie Langley, partner at Results International. “We will undoubtedly see a lot of interest in tech businesses that can help physical retailers bridge the gap, and turn physical stores into a positive as part of their broader digital transformation.” More.
But Wait, There’s More
- Apple’s Gadgets Co-Star In Its New TV Drama – WSJ
- How Online Sellers Can Get Your Phone Number And Call After You Browse Their Site – CNBC
- Blackstone Buys Bumble Owner, Valuing Dating Business At $3B – The Information
- YouTube: Introducing A New Look For Desktop And Tablets – blog
- WPP’s Wunderman Thompson To Consolidate 3 More Agencies – Business Insider
- Powerful Coalition Pushes Back On Anti-Tech Fever – NYT
- Amazon Executive Behind Kindle, Physical Stores To Leave – Bloomberg
- Firefox’s Rise, Fall And Privacy-First Renaissance – FastCo
- Teens Are Exposing Personal Data By Setting Up Instagram Business Accounts – NBC
You’re Hired
