Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
A Flurry Of Activity
Will retail media ever flourish beyond garden walls?
On Monday, Snowflake inked a partnership with Affinity Solutions, a company that sells purchase data for targeted advertising, so advertisers can access this data directly through Snowflake’s platform.
Until now, Snowflake clients had to rely on third parties, such as Nielsen or IRI, to access retailer data.
Investing in retail media is a “top priority” for Snowflake, the company’s head of retail and CPG, Rosemary DeAragon, tells Insider.
But DeAragon adds that Snowflake doesn’t intend to compete with retailers. Rather, Snowflake will use clean rooms to make data more widely available to advertisers.
Walled gardens, such as Amazon and Walmart, have clean rooms of their own, but only for targeting ads across their owned-and-operated inventory, which causes fragmentation. TV has a similar problem.
But the only way to get publishers to share their first-party data is to protect it. Through Snowflake, a retailer can target ads to a competitor’s customers, for example, but can’t see any information about a rival brand’s campaigns or sales.
Rising Tide
Smaller and diverse-owned streaming platforms want to amplify their voice.
And so, on Monday, independent streamers, including Chicken Soup for the Soul, Tastemade, Revry, Future Today and kweliTV, banded together to form the Independent Streaming Alliance (ISA). By collectively marketing a combined 2,200 streaming endpoints to advertisers and distributors, the ISA hopes to help each platform better compete.
Allen Media Group, Vevo and Trusted Media Brands are also initial members of the ISA, which will work with iSpot for measurement and possibly as a currency.
At launch, the ISA is prioritizing integrations with SSPs and DSPs to make sure its inventory is available programmatically and through direct deals.
A big focus for the ISA is to create a central access point for diverse-owned media and diverse audiences.
Revry, for example, develops content about the LGBTQ+ experience, and kweliTV centers on Black culture.
Considering how much noise the media and advertising industry is making about DEI, being able to reach these audiences more easily could be a strong selling point.
Side-Eyeing AI
Whether they’re using Google’s Performance Max, Meta’s Advantage+ or TikTok’s Smart Performance Campaigns, marketers are troubled by how these AI-powered ad tools are shrouded in secrecy, Digiday reports.
AI tools manage and claim to optimize ad campaigns for marketers without giving them a look at what’s under the hood. Brands often have no idea how their ads are performing, because they have no way to measure or validate the impact of their ads.
Marketers have been wringing their hands over the black-box nature of Performance Max and Advantage+, in particular, for more than a year. The introduction of generative AI to these already enigmatic programs has only sharpened advertiser worries.
But although brands want more control, transparency and insight into their ad campaigns, they also realize they have little choice but to continue working with powerful players like Google and Meta. Brands are growing resigned to the possibility that ad campaigns will be 100% automated in the future, according to Digiday.
But Wait, There’s More!
Salesforce is doubling the size of its investment funds for generative AI startups to $500 million. [Bloomberg]
The FTC will file an injunction to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. [CNBC]
Eric Seufert: Unpacking Apple’s new link tracking privacy feature. [Mobile Dev Memo]
Tremor International rebrands to Nexxen. [VideoWeek]
The Athletic, the sports site owned by The New York Times, lays off 20 journalists in a newsroom reorg. [NYT]
You’re Hired!
Acxiom appoints Adobe veteran Judith Hammerman as SVP of cloud growth. [release]
Canela Media hires Chechu Lasheras as chief strategy officer. [LinkedIn]
Ecommerce tech company Rokt taps Srishti Gupta as chief product officer, Josh DeFrain as CIO officer and Craig Galvin as CRO. [release]
