Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Buy Me Maybe
Could Experian acquire LiveRamp?
Rumors abound, Digiday reports.
LiveRamp is the data onboarding company behind the deterministic alternative ID option RampID.
Whispers of a LiveRamp sale started late last year when its stock price plummeted alongside that of many other ad tech stocks. But its stock prices have since inched back up, which now makes it a less attractive choice for buyers seeking a good deal.
Experian’s interest in LiveRamp may stem from competition with TransUnion. Both have already made other ad tech acquisitions.
In 2020, Experian bought ID resolution provider Tapad, and TransUnion snatched up Tru Optik, a CTV, streaming audio and gaming data management platform.
If LiveRamp does sell, the company could fetch $2 billion based on its roughly $1.6 billion market cap – but it may have a hard time convincing execs it’s worth the price.
Competition is getting intense in the post-cookie identity solution space. And LiveRamp depends in part on third-party cookies – the very things it purports to replace – for its own RampID solution. Oh, the irony.
A Call For Amazon
Amazon has its sights set on mobile.
It’s supposedly in talks with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, in addition to Dish, to sell cheap phone plans to Prime subscribers, Bloomberg reports. Amazon wants to offer plans for $10 per month, hoping to boost customer loyalty among the biggest Prime spenders.
This would make Amazon a network reseller.
Amazon already tried to be a mobile provider with the Fire Phone in 2014, but had to shutter the product due to weak sales. This time around, Amazon expects that reselling plans will generate new Prime subscribers without the cost of managing a mobile network.
According to analysts, Prime memberships stagnated when Amazon increased its annual subscription price to $139 per year, up from $119. Some people turned to Walmart+ as a lower-cost alternative at $98 annually.
But there’s something in it for the mobile carriers, too. People are canceling broadband service packages in favor of wireless plans and streaming, so reselling through Amazon at a steep discount could help carriers compete.
Flightless Bird
An internal document obtained by The New York Times shows Twitter’s ad revenue is down by more than half since owner Elon Musk implemented his “free speech absolutist” approach to content moderation.
Ads account for roughly 90% of Twitter’s revenue, but it has fallen short of sales targets all year. From April 1 through the first week of May, Twitter pulled in $88 million from ads, down 59% YoY.
Musk confirmed these numbers in a Twitter Spaces interview with presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday. “In Europe and North America, we’ve seen roughly half our advertising disappear overnight simply because we insist on free speech,” he said.
Advertisers aren’t necessarily concerned about more free speech, but they are worried about hate speech, harassment and conspiracy theorizing.
Musk himself has promoted conspiracy theories on the platform. Twitter recently introduced adjacency controls to ensure ads don’t appear alongside controversial content – which several brands have used to avoid appearing alongside Musk’s tweets.
As some of Twitter’s top advertisers, including Apple, Amazon and Disney, scale back spending on the platform, Twitter’s priciest ads have gone unsold. To make up for shortfalls, Twitter is now selling ads for product verticals it previously excluded, such as gambling and marijuana.
Looks like incoming Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino has her work cut out.
But Wait, There’s More!
Many consumers distrust AI-generated search results. [Insider]
Spotify plans more layoffs after scaling back on original content. [TechCrunch]
Why some TV buyers are placing measurement bets on VideoAmp. [Digiday]
