Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
A Jeff Of All Trades
The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green touted retail advertising as a major growth opportunity at a presentation to TTD investors this week. Green says the market could soon reach $500 billion (retail media currently makes maybe $50 billion per year, $40 billion going to Amazon), Insider reports.
“Now you can show an ad to a consumer and then see when that same consumer actually buys it in a brick-and-mortar store,” he told investors. “It creates a level of efficiency in the open internet that we’ve never had before.”
Easier said than done, however.
For one thing, retail advertising is new to The Trade Desk. It’s a different business, with more elements of search and requiring connections to warehouse and store inventory.
The category also already has 400-pound gorilla Criteo, plus Publicis-owned CitrusAd, Microsoft’s PromoteIQ and other strong contenders.
The Trade Desk has the ultimate flagship client: the great ‘Wal’ itself, or Walmart.
But the Walmart deal isn’t lucrative for TTD. Just like Microsoft is flexible on its take rate for Netflix ads. Everyone’s making wild concessions to land that anchor client.
Also, retailers aren’t like digital publishers that contribute to open programmatic campaign inventory. The Walmart Connect DSP is a walled garden with a familiar TTD interface.
Is BeReal For Real?
What’s all the talk about BeReal?
The French photo-sharing social media app launched in 2019, but got major traction this year.
Research says over 90% of BeReal users downloaded the app this year, 40% of whom are in the US. Which means marketers are circling like hawks.
Big-name brands like Chipotle and e.l.f. Cosmetics (familiar early adopters of channels like TikTok and Twitch) have tested BeReal, Digiday reports.
But BeReal doesn’t currently support advertising.
Advertising goes against the terms and conditions, and even organic attempts can’t get that far because there’s a limit on how many users an account can add as “friends.”
The idea behind BeReal is to give people content that’s, well, real, which typically doesn’t include ads. It’s meant to be for a narrow group of actual friends, not a following.
BeReal could add search-based ad opportunities. For now, though, conversations with brand marketers about the platform generally “die out,” Charlie Naus, managing director of creative agency Carson + Doyle, tells Digiday.
Could BeReal follow the Instagram path, when that path meant being acquired by a parent company that can squeeze out value and ramp the user count to a billion?
Bearer Of Bad News
The web is littered with the wrecks of news content productions that bought into a Facebook initiative.
Pivoting to video is a punchline, at this point. But don’t forget about the paltry local news investments that were just coupons for advertising on Facebook. Or the publishers that invested in Facebook content, only to have Facebook put the brakes on all news in the News Feed. Instant Articles, lol.
What about the past few years, when Meta commissioned $100 million in reporting for its News tab? They ditched that in July, based on a reprioritization from news to “creator” economy opportunities.
Which is a long way of saying, are you really surprised that Facebook unceremoniously pulled the plug on its subscription newsletter product, Bulletin, which was essentially a hastily stood-up version of Substack?
“While this off-platform product itself is ending, we remain committed to supporting these and other creators’ success and growth on our platform,” according to a statement by a Meta spokesperson to The New York Times.
But Wait, There’s More!
YouTube in secret talks to own TV home screens. [Australian Financial Review]
More about how Instagram’s new ad formats work. [The Verge]
Google agrees to pay $85 million to settle Arizona consumer privacy suit. [Bloomberg]
Will SKAdNetwork 4.0 finally kill device fingerprinting? [Mobile Dev Memo]
Walmart works with live video shopping platform Firework to add shoppable video. [The Drum]
As Disney and Comcast CEOs spar over control of Hulu, insiders describe confusion and frustration. [Insider]
Speaking of Disney, it’s stuck doing damage control after opposing the “Don’t Say Gay” law (and Florida fought back by pulling funding). [Variety]
You’re Hired!
Chicken Soup for the Soul hires Phil Oppenheim as chief content officer. [release]
