Well, here’s the most ad techy thing ever: Clean room platform InfoSum is integrating with Unified ID 2.0 to expand how advertisers can use their first-party data in the bidstream. Omnicom Media Group is one of the first buy-side partners planning to take advantage of the integration.
Ad blockers are still a thing, even if you haven’t heard much about them in the past few years. And they still see widespread use among ad-weary audiences. But while some publishers may write off ad-blocker users as a lost cause, some like AccuWeather are finding success monetizing this part of their audience through bypass solutions.
The term “sustainable marketing” calls to mind disposable bamboo razor handles from Schick, the promise McDonald’s made last year that by 2025 all Happy Meal toys will be made from environmentally friendly material and Coca-Cola’s plan to launch a new bottle made from 100% recycled plastic. But digital media has a carbon footprint, too. A big one.
Noodle & Company first started a rewards program in 2017, but for the first few years the goal was mainly to “surprise and delight” customers with random freebies or upgrades. In late 2019, it became a points-based program. The most significant aspect of the program’s transformation is mental, going from serving up random benefits to a system “based on personalized [and] targeted offers to individual guests.”
The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), the main technical standards developer of the internet, will lose longtime university partner MIT as administrator and US host organization at the end of this year. Many W3C members are advocating for a new organizational structure as a non-profit funded by members and board members – a familiar structure for industry orgs. But there is no immediate solution and MIT won’t renew its host contract at the end of the year. The clock is ticking.
Two years after Instacart made its first major push into ad tech, the company is launching more products that follow the playbook written by other major online ad platforms. “We’re a maturing ad platform,” said Instacart VP of advertising product management Ali Miller. As Instacart itself learns over time what works and what doesn’t on its ad platform, it will turn those learnings into commercial products.
Consumer habits and changes among retailers themselves have reshaped the agency landscape around a new form of commerce media. The trend wasn’t as obvious a few years ago, when online retail media opportunity looked scattered with an emphasis on discounting: think cash-back apps and the heady days of Groupon sales, or CPGs on Amazon Fresh. Now, a brand that sells online faces a different landscape and an entirely different team of partners helping them.
Google: Still trying to make shopping on Google happen. The search giant announced a new suite of shopper marketing tools on Monday. Google also that its Smart Shopping campaigns, which are campaigns connected to a merchant’s inventory catalogue, will be folded into its new Performance Max product by the end of the year.
Walmart uses its “growth algorithm” – adding high-margin advertising and its third-party marketplace businesses as it simultaneously invests in low-margin businesses (namely, groceries and ecommerce fulfillment). Macy’s is pursuing its Polaris plan, an overhaul built around its new customer lifetime value measurements. The mall-based fashion brand EXPRESS has an EXPRESSway Forward plan. Across categories and shopping channels, US retailers have reshaped their businesses.
Instacart just took its first steps beyond owned-and-operated Instacart media with the launch of a new retail media offering that serves ads on grocers’ sites and apps. The new retail advertising product, called Carrot Ads, is part of a broader ecommerce offering Instacart introduced on Wednesday, which also includes Carrot Warehouses, a warehousing and fulfillment service, and an advertising analytics product dubbed Carrot Insights.
