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Articles By Staff
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Food52 Gobbles Up Another Retail Brand; Tubi’s Revenue Is Set To Soar
Another Cook In The Kitchen The ecommerce-focused publisher Food52 has acquired Schoolhouse, a lighting and home goods company, for $48 million, Forbes reports. The deal was funded by Food52’s private equity owner, TCG. To coincide with the deal, TCG also contributed an incremental round of funding. The capital will be used to back Food52’s expansion […]
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Can Mozilla Shake Its Google Addiction?; Vox And Group Nine Aim To Make Their Move
The Last Place You Search Mozilla, which reported its earnings on Monday, expects to generate more than $500M in revenue this year. That’s up from roughly $465 million last year and around the same the year before. Where’s the money coming from? Historically, Mozilla’s revenue has been very reliant on its Google search licensing deal […]
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Big Tech Throws Its Weight Around; Quartile Acquires Sidecar
Rules For Thee, Not For We Leaked emails reveal the horse trading between Microsoft and Apple to bring Xbox games to iPhones, The Verge reports. (Microsoft settled on web-based gaming to avoid app store fees.) Also this week, YouTube and Roku signed a last-minute distribution deal. In the hardball negotiation, Roku exposed Google’s domineering style, […]
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Amazon’s Smash-And-Grab Year; Who Consolidates The Consolidators?
Smash-And-Grab Ecommerce Retailers are petitioning Congress and attorneys general to strengthen laws targeting online marketplaces that sell stolen goods. CVS CEO Karen Lynch told CNBC that a spree of smash-and-grab robberies in the US has been fueled by such marketplaces, because it’s so easy to anonymously resell products without repercussions. Sellers would still keep their […]
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Roku And YouTube Settle Long-Running Dispute; Facebook Searches For iOS Workarounds
Play Nice Will they? Won’t they? They will. Roku is bringing YouTube TV back onto its devices after a monthslong clash with Google that spilled over into Congress. Roku and Google finally agreed on a multiyear extension for Roku distribution of the YouTube and YouTube TV apps, Axios reported. In April, Roku warned customers that […]
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Does Amazon Ever Not Win?; BuzzFeed Hits The Market With A Thud
Amazon The Impervious Google and Facebook are reeling from data privacy changes. Tim Cook warned investors that Apple underestimated part shortages and would not meet demand until next year. Macy’s slimmed its store inventory. Disney’s production schedules are delayed by months and even years. And Amazon is – doing great. The ongoing supply-chain drama, COVID-19 fallout […]
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Google’s Swing-And-A-Miss On Commerce; Can Agency Hold Cos Escape Their Roots?
Google Fails To Deliver In 2014, Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt raised eyebrows when he referred to Amazon as Google’s primary search opponent, rather than Yahoo or Bing. Fast-forward eight years, and Amazon is now its obvious challenger, and Google has utterly failed to address its own ecommerce vulnerabilities, according to a LinkedIn post by Faisal […]
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Byron Allen Wins Publicity In TV Ad Discrimination Suit; Microsoft Sharpens Its Edge
Legal Beef Byron Allen’s $10 billion discrimination suit against McDonald’s was dismissed by a federal judge on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. Allen owns Allen Media Group, whose brands include The Weather Channel and Bally Sports Regional Networks, among others. He alleged that McDonald’s discriminates against Black-owned media companies in its TV ad investments. […]
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The First-Party Imperative; Real-Time Profiling At Its Best?
First-Party Time As first-party data sets grow, marketing operations are reining in their ad costs and boosting ROI, The Wall Street Journal reports. For example, PepsiCo has amassed around 75 million user records from its consumer base. This data saves tens of millions of dollars on ad spend, according to Shyam Venugopal, the SVP of […]
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The Not-So-Tempting Amazon Live; Pubs Pay it Forward To Get Paid
(More Dead Than) Amazon Live Amazon Live still hasn’t gained much traction with influencers or product review publishers and their valuable audiences. Amazon was hoping that a slew of publisher-produced live video programs would drive Cyber Monday shoppers to its live content and discovery service. But many publishers were hesitant to jump in after Amazon […]
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Must Facebook GIF Up On Giphy; The Data Behind Black Friday Deals
Will Meta “GIF Up” GIPHY? Facebook parent company Meta is in the hot seat again. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s competition watchdog, has called on Meta to offload Giphy, the GIF search engine and content animation service it acquired in May 2020, citing multiple anti-competition concerns in a press release. The CMA […]
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Google’s Affiliate Link Penalty; The Brand vs. Performance Mistake
Ads Are There For You Publishers attempting to cut themselves a slice of the commerce pie are running into an unlikely – or maybe not so unlikely – competitor: Google. Seems like everywhere they turn, there’s Google with a new way to penalize them for experimenting with alternative revenue sources. Take BuzzFeed, which has emphasized […]
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The Subscription Economy Craze; Is Shopify A Shopping App?
Subscription Conniptions We live in a “subscription economy” now, writes Nieman Labs. You don’t buy the Aladdin DVD; you subscribe to Disney+ “until you die or your card expires.” But as subscriptions become more important business metrics, particularly in news and entertainment, it’s important to be honest about what companies mean when they report subscriber […]
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How Twitter Blue Does Things Differently; And More Retailers Join The Ad Platform Biz
Bolt From The Blue Twitter Blue, Twitter’s $3-per-month subscription service, was met with applause this month by digital media and news publishers thrilled to see a tech platform cut them a rev share. Participating publishers offer ad-free articles on Twitter’s in-app browser and earn a share of the Twitter Blue subscription pool in return. The […]
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Outbrain Buys Contextual Video Startup For $55M; Retailers Want To Be Amazon
Street Appeal Outbrain will acquire Video Intelligence, a contextual targeting startup focused on video and CTV, for $55 million. It’s Outbrain’s first big move since the content recommendation company IPO’d in July. The deal makes sense. Web advertising isn’t dying, despite reports you may have heard. Then again, it’s also not in an impressive growth […]
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Will Apple Let Safari Free?; Why Spotify Is All-In On Podcasts
Safari, Don’t Call It A Comeback Veteran browser developer Bruce Lawson recently penned a manifesto of sorts calling for Apple to “set Safari free.” But there is reason to believe the Safari WebKit group is being dusted off after a decade spent in storage in Apple’s attic. WebKit evangelist Jen Simmons tweeted out the group’s […]
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Volta Charges Up An Ad Network; Can Amazon Sustain Public Trust?
All Charged Up It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s another random company launching an ancillary ad business! Volta, which operates almost 3,000 electric vehicle charging stations, introduced the Volta Media Network on Thursday. But the rollout is less random than it seems. According to Volta, a retail media play was always part of its […]
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ATT Is A Level Setter; Private Click Measurement Comes To Safari
Un-Cornering The Market For years, the public market was quicksand for ad tech. Investors were unimpressed by early public companies like Rocket Fuel, Sizmek and Millennial Media, to name just a few. Wall Street also didn’t want to bet against advertising-dependent companies in competition with Google and Facebook. (The Trade Desk was a notable exception.) […]
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Samba Files The ACR S-1; Yelp’s ROI Pitch To CPGs
Can You Samba Alone? Samba TV filed its S-1 on Tuesday, often the precursor to an IPO (although many are filed in vain). Samba is one of a few automated content recognition (ACR) companies that are specialists in recognizing and attributing content played on a smart TV. But the ACR market is tough for independents. […]
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Was Zoom Right To Eschew Ads?; The Data Gimmicks Never End
Turn The Other Cheap Zoom CEO Eric Yuan shot down proposals to introduce ads in 2019 and again in 2020, when some executives floated a chance to capitalize on the influx of traffic and new users during the pandemic. One person who heard Yuan’s response says he called the idea of ads on Zoom “cheap […]
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Apple’s Sneaky Plan To Snag Subscription Revenue; Cord Cutting On The Decline
The Poisoned Apple Apple has been secretly buying app download ads on behalf of apps as a way to secure iOS subscription fees in perpetuity, according to a Forbes report. Google won’t delete the ads, though they’re placed without the knowledge or consent of the app developers, including Bumble, Tinder, HBO, Masterclass and Babbel, the […]
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The Fate Of IMDb TV; And Maybe Let’s All Chill About The Supply-Chain Stuff?
Whose Free Lunch? Amazon may rebrand IMDb TV, its free ad-supported streaming service, because employees fear the clunky name is a drag on sign-ups, The Information reports. The waffling between IMDb TV, Freedive or some variation of Free TV is amusing. But perhaps the most interesting morsel comes at the very end. “While the business […]
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The Peril And Promise Of Location Data; Is Creative Back In Charge?
The Location Equation Location data companies have seen an uptick in inquiries from government officials and public health groups, The Washington Post reports. It’s no surprise – health officials and local governments had to track the effects of quarantine measures as well as next-order impacts on public services, such as transportation. Though the applications are […]
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DoubleVerify Acquires OpenSlate; Supply Chain Chaos Intensifies
Trust, But DoubleVerify DoubleVerify is dropping $150 million to acquire OpenSlate, another ad verification and analytics company. OpenSlate is a specialist in digital and streaming video. Last year, OpenSlate made a risky business choice when it defied a change in the YouTube measurement program shielding accounts from brand safety vendors. (A video of violent or […]
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Coca-Cola Crowns WPP; Insta Will Start Paying Influencers More For Reels
The Coca-Cola Of Accounts WPP won the pitch of the year: Coca-Cola’s media, creative and data agency business. The new account is “unparalleled in our industry in terms of breadth and depth of capabilities,” said WPP CEO Mark Read in a release. The fusion of creative, media and mar tech is indicative of a trend […]
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IAB Europe Under Fire; The Dynamic Paywall Approach
IAB Europe; IAB You’re Up The IAB Europe published a blog post on Friday with the news that the Belgian data protection authority (the APD) will find the Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF), the industry mechanism for conveying consent signals in the bidstream, to be in breach of GDPR. The decision hinges on the IAB […]
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Can These Fortresses Be Breached?; An Ad Revenue Reality Check
The Fortresses Of Anti-Solitude It’s worth reading at length, but a Q&A between Ben Thompson of Stratechery and Eric Seufert, writer of Mobile Dev Memo, elaborates on platform advertising dynamics, particularly for self-attributing networks like Facebook, Snapchat and Apple. Will ATT and Apple’s privacy policies prove more damaging than expected to platforms like Facebook or […]
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Pubs Can Bring First-Party Data To DV360; Zuck Plans To Bypass Apple’s 30% Fees
The Power Player ID When Google said earlier this year that it wouldn’t support email-based identifiers, it also made a concession to publishers called publisher-provided IDs (PPIDs). Now, PPIDs – which are primarily based on emails collected by publishers – will be available to Google DV360 advertisers. That’s a big advantage for DV360, but Google […]
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Google’s Performance Max Is Ready For Primetime; FLoC Is Not
A Commanding Performance Google is expanding Performance Max, a product introduced last year that buys across YouTube, Maps, Search, Gmail, Google’s display network and Discover, which includes the product discovery and shopping feed. Check out the blog post. As part of the move, Google Local Marketing campaigns and Smart Shopping, a retail-sponsored product solution, will […]
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Social Nets Dream Of TV; Facebook Shuts Down DDA Beta
Screen Dreams Has social media outgrown the phone? YouTube may be the biggest player in streaming TV, but other social platforms are eager to follow, spurred on by ecommerce dollars. Late last week, Pinterest announced Pinterest TV, a content app that can be downloaded to Apple or Android TV systems. It’s a natural next step […]