Commerce

Wall Street wanted profits. Big Tech delivered. That was the case for Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and – more than any other US tech giant – Amazon.

Meta’s shares surged by nearly 15% after reporting Q4 earnings on Thursday. It was the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, following a dismal 2022.

Prime Video is playing with ads now, making it the latest entrant to the AVOD streaming wars. Consumers and advertisers have mixed feelings about the new ad offering.

In today’s newsletter: Netflix is the only profitable streaming service; Meta’s automated support software frustrates advertisers; and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission may designate Amazon a “distributor of goods.”

There are myriad reasons behind any business failure. But the failure of so many DTC brands raises the uncomfortable question: Were we wrong about the value of first-party data?

After going through denial and anger over the death of third-party cookies, the ad tech industry enters the bargaining stage. Plus, top takeaways from the FTC’s first-ever AI tech summit.

In today’s newsletter: The CMA comes out with an updated evaluation of Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox proposals; the IAB talks Privacy Sandbox with Google; and Temu may be a shell company, but its ad spend keeps skyrocketing.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Arc Of History The Browser Company is backed by tech elite like Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, Medium founder Ev Williams, Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. TBC makes a browser called Arc, and this week it launched […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Prime Time Ads have arrived on Prime Video.  But audiences have just about had it with streaming services that nickel-and-dime them, The Wall Street Journal reports. Instead of forking over an additional $3 per month to avoid ads, many have canceled their Amazon […]

Last week, FTC Chair Lina Khan announced a probe into Big Tech’s relationship with generative AI companies at an FTC forum to address competition concerns related to AI technology – its first AI-focused tech summit.

Conagra-owned brand Birds Eye brings a new approach to online video, social shopping and first-party data.

To better service clients – and help with its own bottom line – Havas Media Network is pushing into specialty services.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Ring Airer Netflix is paying more than $5 billion for the rights to livestream “WWE Raw,” Variety reports. The 10-year deal is effective starting next January and represents Netflix’s biggest push into live content. Following a live sports debut with its “Netflix Cup” […]

Index Marketplaces activates the curation capabilities of DSPs, DMPs and RMNs – and the demand for their PMP deals – across Index Exchange’s network of publishers.

Crunchtime The EU’s Digital Markets Act has teeth – and now it’s biting, TechCrunch reports. The DMA regulates anti-competitive practices within “gatekeeper platforms” that have an annual turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros. Meta, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and ByteDance all tick that box. Gatekeepers have until March to ensure their operations in the EU […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Commerce Copycats The Wild Man Drinking Company (which makes a novelty item called the Krak’in used for shotgunning beers) filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Temu last week (H/t @Sean Frank, CEO of the wallet brand Ridge). Why’s that interesting?   Temu frames itself as […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Don’t Look For Me The FTC isn’t slowing its crackdown on location data brokers. On Thursday, it issued a complaint against InMarket for failing to obtain informed consent from users on its own apps and third-party apps that use InMarket’s SDK before collecting […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. What’s In Store? Netflix’s latest effort to push ads onto subscribers is – you guessed it – a retail bundle. The company is piloting a new package deal with French retailer Carrefour, Bloomberg reports. Customers in the French cities of Bordeaux and Rouen […]

ASICS is testing data clean rooms and other cloud-based advertising solutions. It shows why vendor and channel tests are important, but not for the faint of heart.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pining For AI Google laid off nearly 1,000 employees last week – but the hits keep coming. It’s also scrapping hundreds of jobs in its ad sales division, Business Insider reports. The headcount reduction is a byproduct of restructuring its ad sales team, […]

Planet Fitness is hiring an in-house ad sales team to win agency and advertiser budgets for its omnichannel media netw … Wait, what? That’s right. The gym chain has an RMN now.

Two of Salesforce’s new AI-powered tools are nearly ready for prime time: one for segment creation and another to help retailers coordinate the pricing of promotions to different audiences across channels.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Cannot Fulfill This Request Generative AI products continue to fail in obviously foreseeable ways.  The latest: Amazon listings that appear to have used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate product names and descriptions feature an identical error message, The Verge reports. Who doesn’t want to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AdExchanger is taking the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Our daily news roundup will return on Tues., Jan. 16. The Clean Slate Disney has been talking up its data clean room at CES. It now has 140 demand customers, and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pod Patrol The CTV ad experience is a hot topic at CES this week. Streamers and brands are exploring interactive ad units, while platforms are still trying to determine the optimal streaming ad load. But no matter how advertisers prefer to engage viewers, […]

Instacart is expanding its ad offerings with Caper Carts, the Instacart-owned shopping carts that scan items for self-checkout. But the rollout will be gradual while Instacart figures out how the ads are actually impacting shopper behavior.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The New Creative Controls Does “alt_copy_copy2_brand_red_hold” mean anything to you? That’s the way most creative units and product ads are titled, and any associated metadata would likely be the brand’s name and the banner ad size. Meh. But a generative AI bot could […]

One retail search startup, Symbiosys, which launched last year, is trying to clean up the clutter with an idea it calls collaborative bidding

Until universal standards are set and adopted by retailers, marketers need to ask some boring yet fundamental questions about the metrics currently in use if they want to assess and compare performance across retailers. 

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Panel Discussion Bad news for Nielsen: Another panel has entered the arena. Samba TV is teaming up with HyphaMetrics to launch a panel for measuring video viewership across linear, streaming and other digital formats, Ad Age reports. HyphaMetrics plans to use Samba TV’s […]