Amazon Ad Sales Leader Seth Dallaire Jumps To Instacart; YouTube Removes Ads Used To Game Music Charts

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Cart, Meet Horse

Seth Dallaire, Amazon’s global ad sales leader for the past five years, was named chief revenue officer of Instacart on Friday. Read the release. Instacart’s primary business is with grocers and retailers, who use it for online ordering and delivery. But as it grows, Instacart becomes a stronger marketing and analytics company, since it can target deals and attribute sales. Dallaire’s experience at Amazon and Yahoo before that should be useful in pitching Instacart’s value to agencies and shopper marketers. “As consumers continue to become more comfortable buying their groceries online, there are an increasing number of opportunities for brands and retailers, large and small, to engage them more deeply,” he said in the release. Though one retailer Instacart won’t be working with is Amazon, which dropped Instacart as the main Whole Foods grocery delivery partner late last year.

Off The Charts

YouTube will stop counting views from paid ads on its one-day tracking chart for music videos, ending a long-standing practice used by artists and record labels to pay their way to the top, Bloomberg reports. The decision cuts off a huge revenue stream for YouTube, which has become a premier destination for artists and record labels to promote their new work. YouTube has been happy to rake in the revenue as the music industry games its charts, but now it wants to “provide more transparency to the industry,” the company said in a blog post. Read it. YouTube also wants to be on par with companies like Nielsen, whose metrics determine the royalties paid to artists and record labels. More.

The DTC Scene

Consumer goods giant SC Johnson acquired the startup men’s skincare company Oars + Alps at a valuation of about $20 million, reports Chicago Inno. It’s a relatively small deal, but points to a popular potential exit ramp for DTC companies that haven’t raised tens of millions in venture capital. Oars + Alps didn’t have huge media and marketing blitzes like those of Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s, the frontrunners in DTC men’s care products – nor did it have their billion-dollar acquisitions. Its story is more akin to Walker & Company Brands, maker of Bevel grooming products and Form hair care, which was acquired by Procter & Gamble last year for a similar sum. More.

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