Amazon Flubs 'Targeted' Messages; Seth Demsey Moves On From AOL

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Swing And A Miss

Amazon came under fire Tuesday for a “technical glitch” that inadvertently delivered baby gift registry alerts to men and non-pregnant women alike, resulting in a light-hearted tweet storm from customers. One read: “Amazon just informed me that someone has purchased a gift from my baby registry. My baby is 21, and hopes it’s a keg.” Some customers, however, had experienced recent miscarriages and were put off by the faulty email promotion. Gillette, too, raised eyebrows in July when the P&G-owned brand delivered free razors and a “Welcome to manhood” promotional package intended for 18-year-olds, to a much older demographic – or women. Whether a case of bad data or a standard technical glitch, moral of the story is: Marketing mishaps spare no brand. More.

Moving On

Seth Demsey, the high-profile CTO of AOL Platforms, stepped down earlier this summer. Demsey, who helped AOL consolidate its ad products under one roof, left his post after more than six years to start a new “technology studio” called 300 Qubits. He will also act as an adviser to Revcontent. “[I] took it from a pre-programmatic company to a full-feature global program platform for buyers and sellers across mobile, display and video,” Demsey told AdExchanger. “It’s a phenomenal journey.” Why Revcontent? Because the focus is on more than monetization, and that’s interesting. “It feels good to not only be working on ad tech but using the techniques to create better organic content environments from a UX and interaction perspective,” Demsey said. Revcontent claimed $183.8 million in revenue last year, according to Inc. Magazine’s 500/5000 survey [AdExchanger coverage]. Demsey will divide his time between Revcontent, 300 Qubits and other ventures. TechCrunch has more.

Snap Suite

Snap added 14 creative partners to its network to help advertisers drive ROI through swipe-up ads with in-app games, GIFs, 360 videos and mobile coupons. Among the selected few are rich-media platform Undertone, Adludio, which leverages the smartphone’s haptic and gyroscope features, and in-app game platform GameCommerce. Read the full list here. The new roster joins Snap’s original list of creative partners, including Celtra, VidMob, Vidsy, Quickframe, Spreadfast and Percolate.

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