Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Retail Wagging The Dog
Retail media networks are advertising businesses. Usually. Sort of.
For many retailers, the data-driven ad practice serves different purposes.
Lowe’s announced new digital products for contractors and other professionals, reports Retail Dive.
Home Depot is on the same path. It’s courting contractors for a membership program, knowing those pros attract serious ad budgets from, say, tool manufacturers and paint companies.
Often, the retail media business is more of a B2B partnership program. For years, Coca-Cola has touted Wabi as its claim to DTC relationships and first-party data. Wabi is a B2B merchant app for stores that stock Coke beverages to reorder for themselves. It’s the closest Coca-Cola has to first-party purchase data, though.
Then there’s T-Mobile, which has ambitions to operate a multibillion-dollar ad tech and data business. But T-Mobile also saw that one of the likeliest segments to consider switching to T-Mobile were … rideshare drivers. So it powered up on rideshare ad tech with Octopus Interactive, which creates a package of monetization features and a lower subscription to entice drivers.
Fair Play
The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has a revamped charter calling for increased competition and transparency in digital advertising, Ad Age reports.
The charter urges walled garden business operators to provide third parties with access to their data. (So don’t hold your breath.)
“Players operating as buyer, seller and marketplace should not be allowed to leverage their dominant position to favor their own products and services,” the WFA said. “Self-preferencing stifles innovation, the emergence of new players and suppresses healthy competition.”
Here’s looking at you, Google, Apple and the rest of the monopoly gang.
Another area of focus is sustainability since agencies and advertisers are using emission measurement tech to evaluate ad tech vendors.
Five years ago, when the charter was last updated, it precipitated discussion and action about topics like brand safety, viewability and cross-media measurement, which have since become de facto elements of programmatic media.
Order Up
Streaming viewers see ads for food delivery services all dang day. But how many of those ads lead to a sale?
Instacart inked a partnership with Roku this week to measure the impact of Roku ad buys on actual grocery orders to plan and attribute CPG media buys.
The partnership gives Instacart access to Roku audience and viewership data, which the app can match to its first-party data to determine whether audiences reached on Roku later bought anything on Instacart.
Before sealing the deal, Roku flexed its sales chops with a pilot test of a beverage brand that saw repeat sales at a rate 70% higher than when users buy it for the first time on Instacart.
The partnership makes sense for Roku – which, by the way, now offers users free trials and discounts to DoorDash – since TV and retail media suffer from acute measurement woes. Now that Roku has its own smart TV hardware, it has more control over viewership data via automatic content recognition and how it allows advertisers to use that data.
But Wait, There’s More!
Amazon’s pending price hike stirs debate among media owners. [Digiday]
YouTube’s ad revenue dropped again — and it’s not the only area where Google’s once-unstoppable ad business is showing vulnerability. [Insider]
Microsoft’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is in jeopardy after UK competition regulator rejects the merger. [WSJ]
YouTube introduces AI-powered music ad solutions targeting Gen Z. [The Drum]
Stirista acquires Customer Portfolios to combine acquisition and retention skills. [MediaPost]
You’re Hired!
Publicis promotes Commerce group COO Amy Lanzi to CEO, Digitas North America. [Adweek]
Kantar names Erin Hutchinson as chief marketing officer. [release]
