Commerce

Pacvue has promoted COO Rahul Choraria to chief executive.

In today’s newsletter: How loosened ad restrictions helped snacks take over America; Brazil’s X ban dings stan culture; and Roblox partners with Shopify as it expands real-world ecommerce to all creators.

Wonderful hadn’t done an out-of-home (OOH) marketing push in more than 15 years. That is, until a week ago, when it began a campaign across six major markets to promote its new no-shell pistachio packs.

The bottom is falling out of the mass multichannel TV bundle. Plus, Amazon crushed its first-ever upfront this year.

In today’s newsletter: Google Demand Gen is the industry’s latest over-attribution controversy; data from third-party brokers might not be worth it; and The Trade Desk launches a CTV operating system.

In today’s newsletter: Amazon stands out among Upfronts CTV rookies; Google reveals how much revenue its ad tech divisions make; and women hold more marketing leadership positions than men, but churn is worse for women.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

Roku could start running ads every time you pause a blu-ray. Plus, the kickbacks required to play in the retail media market might eventually shut out all but the biggest brands.

Over the past month alone, there was a major Google Search ranking bug, a calamitous data breach involving Google Ads and Google Merchant Center and outages across Google Ads, the Analytics API outages and Google Merchant Center.

Is it time to retire references to the advertising “duopoly?” Plus, Omnicom wants to bring its major agency brands under unified leadership.

Have we finally reached peak retail media, or is the recent explosion of RMNs the sign of a healthy and thriving marketplace? “It’s the right question to be asking, especially at this time,” says Gopuff’s SVP of business, Daniel Folkman, who helped spearhead the company’s advertising business.

Yahoo DSP has new partnerships with the Planet Fitness media network and Rippl, a co-op of regional grocery and convenience store chains, including Wegmans.

In the past year, Baby product and mattress brand Newton Baby has put all its media channels through a new testing regime for incrementality. It was a revelatory experience.

The growth of Walmart’s ads business and third-party marketplace are separate, it says. Plus, Google and Meta’ve been targeting teens for a while.

In today’s newsletter: Digital twins are marketers’ cool new AI tool; Netflix pulls a Prime Video and defaults lapsed subscribers to the ad-supported tier; and California compromises with Big Tech on two journalism bills.

Adelaide used this latest cash injection to boost its valuation to $60 million ahead of an all-stock acquisition of Rita, an Amsterdam-based data marketplace with a focus on the EU.

Social commerce is already huge in the Asia-Pacific market, and it’s poised to blow up worldwide. Here’s how the success of TikTok Shop forecasts the future development trends of ecommerce and social commerce in the US.

In today’s newsletter: Walmart’s hottest growth drivers are ads and subscriptions; why The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0 could be regulators’ next target; and how the growth of CTV content fortresses is preventing breakout streaming hits.

Digital-native brands need to figure out how to win in retail shelves. They’re finding it difficult, to say the least.

With a landmark ruling potentially forcing Google to change its business practices, who is actually likely to steal some of its search market share? And what should marketers do about it?

In today’s newsletter: How membership bundles are creating new forms of consumer-facing partnerships; typically unflappable platforms leap to action when billionaires are harmed by bad ads; and X’s GARM lawsuit helped politicize brand safety.

Amazon is well positioned to seize the growth of social app-based shopping. Plus, Apple updates are wreaking havoc on publishers again.

Many of Publicis’ fastest-growing and most strategic business units – including CitrusAd, Profitero, Epsilon and Conversant – earn a large chunk of their revenue from other agencies. Is that a problem?

In today’s newsletter: US rules Google has a monopoly in search, but not search ads; Nvidia’s unreleased AI has been scraping online video from YouTube, Netflix and others; and streaming app Max debuts a new personalized home page.

Recent moves by major ad tech players prove the industry doesn’t actually need cookies. But Chrome’s cookie pivot doesn’t clarify what will happen to the 1% of its audience that’s already cookieless or what will become of plans to deprecate the Android Ad ID on mobile.

Amazon’s Advertising Services segment is delivering the dough. It generated $12.8 billion last quarter, up by a cool $2 billion year over year.

Q2 was relatively ho-um for Criteo. Its revenue ticked up by just 1%, although the company did move from a net loss of $2 million in the year-ago quarter to a $28 million profit.

The acquisition puts Reddit in a better position to compete with Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok, which all built or expanded their AI creative generation and optimization tools within the past year.

In the past couple of weeks, many of the world’s biggest CPG and grocery store brands have reported their latest earnings. One thing is clear: CPG brands are under pressure by retailers to squeeze their margins, lower prices and spend more on ads.

Many brand operators feel like they need good general guidelines for attribution. Plus, what’s stepping retail media standardization?