Commerce

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?

In today’s newsletter: To boost its ads biz, Walmart will show in-store ads for non-endemic brands; Hyve Group buys Possible; and the Senate advances KOSA and COPPA 2.0, but the bills face obstacles in the House.

In today’s newsletter: Spotify surges on strong Q2; how Gen Z media preferences are transforming the Olympics; and QSR companies ditch subscription services after first-party data gains fail to materialize.

For CFOs and CEOs, we’ve entered a kind of open hunting season on martech SaaS.

Amazon’s Rufus: yet another example of Big Tech pushing AI bots onto its platforms. Plus, pushback against Google search engine monetization.

The Chrome Privacy Sandbox team is stuck within a Catch-22. Plus, why haven’t media buyers bought more into alternative currencies?

Topsort can lean into Moloco’s algorithmic personalization, while Moloco benefits from Topsort’s footprint with local retailers in the US and in Latin America.

Once consumers are ready to travel, they’re often ready to spend on almost everything, from beauty and booze to electronics and streaming services. And that creates a unique opportunity for advertisers to reach a new audience with high intent, says Christine Maguire, global VP of commercial business at TripAdvisor.

Academy Sports and Outdoors, a sporting goods chain founded in 1938, is trying to get trendy.

Upfront negotiations might take longer than normal this year. Plus, Meta is already in hot water with the EU’s new digital regulations.

Amazon is the king of retail media, but others are growing into worthy contenders. Plus: Movies aren’t making many upfront deals.

This week, we’re diving into the most important thing in advertising – the actual creative – and how major ad platforms are well on their way to an era of creative innovation. Actually, strike that. I meant creative desolation.

In today’s newsletter: Mobile and email providers face political blowback if they enforce ad policies; a new analytics startup sets its sights on Amazon attribution; and CFOs and CMOs are more aligned than you might think.

It’s been almost one year since MediaMath went out of business. Two months later, Infillion acquired the assets out of bankruptcy. Now it’s time for the next phase, says Infillion CRO and CMO Laurel Rossi.

The challenges facing digital advertising feel bigger than ever. But when you’re in Cannes, you can’t help but focus on the positives. Here are the six biggest ad industry trends and positive takeaways from this year’s show.

In today’s newsletter: SSPs lead the way on ad tech’s M&A resurgence; Disney rolls back CPMs to court more streaming ad demand; and why dating apps struggle to grow and monetize their audiences.

At the Cannes Lions, generative AI applications for advertising were out in force. Plus: takes from the Croisette on retail media and cookie conspiracies.

United Airlines really wanted everyone who traveled to Cannes this year for the Lions festival to know it has a media network now. Before takeoff on the 7:50 p.m. overnight Saturday flight from Newark Airport to Nice, France, an ad for Kinective Media, which is the name for United’s new media network, played on every […]

In today’s newsletter: Amazon’s argument that advertisers should trust optimization algorithms over alternative IDs; Japan passes an app store antitrust law targeting Apple and Google; and Google Ads ends support for credit card payments.

Incrementality is a retail media term for attribution. It’s the attempt to measure the actual contribution of advertising to a business’ bottom line. But in a market where everything old is new and everything new has been done a thousand times, it’s important to focus on other kinds of incremental gains.

In today’s newsletter: What the surge in political ad spend on CTV looks like for the end user; Mars Wrigley tries to make gum stick online; and Google neglects Fitbit after mining it for data.

Media governance measures advertisers can put in place to navigate the complexity of brand safety and gain better control of the quality of their media spend.