Commerce

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The twentieth century saw very little disruption for category-leading brands. Del Monte fruit, Nabisco biscuits, Gold Medal flour, Sherwin-Williams paint, Gillette razors, Lipton tea, Ivory soap – across practically every consumer business, America’s top brands in 1923 were the same category leaders 60 years later. But nearly one century on, those rankings are starting to […]

Pokémon Oreos, limited edition Sour Patch Kids, Heinz Halloween outfits and McDonald’s BTS meals. As brands go all-in on ecommerce and digital data, there’s been a notable recent uptick in their efforts to acquire first-party ecom data by dangling personalized or limited-edition products. Savvy kids might even call them thirsty, even as they enter their […]

Gartner’s fourth annual Magic Quadrant for buy-side ad tech in a nutshell: Keep your eye on Amazon. Amazon is ascending into the stratosphere, where it’s now rubbing shoulders in the “leader” category alongside Google and The Trade Desk. Rounding out the leader quadrant you’ll find Adobe, Amobee, Adform and Mediaocean. MediaMath, Criteo, Verizon Media (ahem, […]

Get your mop and vacuum ready, because the clean room craze is only getting started. Amazon on Tuesday launched the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), its cloud-based clean room product, from beta. Marketers can now integrate AMC with the Amazon demand-side platform (DSP) for campaign measurement and analytics. AMC is built on the Amazon Web Services […]

Spend Money To Make Money The proliferation of companies launching ancillary advertising businesses is a boon to total ad spend. Buy-now-pay-later players Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay and PayPal spent a combined $52.45 million on TV, print and digital media from January to September this year, Business Insider reports. That’s up 130% from last year. BNPL companies […]

Do Me A Favor Amazon told Congress in 2019 that it doesn’t favor Amazon-owned brands in search results. But that isn’t credible to sellers, who time and again see Amazon rivals shoot into the top three search results immediately. A former Amazon employee told The Markup that Amazon reserved a top search spot for new […]

Platform Peril Seemingly every grocery chain now has a programmatic platform, not to mention Lowe’s, Home Depot, Instacart, GoPuff and buy-now-pay-later companies like Afterpay and Klarna, to be joined soon by Uber, perhaps Shopify and who knows who else. Many of these companies – the BNPLs and all the mobile app-based businesses – got into […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Big Game Amazon CEO Andy Jessy (Jeff who?) issued a bold statement at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle this week. “In the case of games, we have a belief that that could end up being the largest category in entertainment over a long period […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Outside Inc. CEO Robin Thurston is very aware of subscription fatigue. At a time when streaming platforms are working to boost their subscriber numbers with bundled ad-free and ad-supported channel packages, Outside TV is being used in part as a vehicle to entice […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Ecommerce Byte? TikTok parent company ByteDance is looking to take on Amazon and Alibaba with its own global ecommerce platform, Business Insider reports. The company hopes to expand its online shopping platform outside of China, which could launch as a stand-alone app or within […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Paul Gubbins, VP, CTV Strategy, Publica. While definitions of what actually constitutes a connected TV (CTV) impression are still being widely debated, brand safety companies discover new cases of fraud in streaming on a regular […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Instacart Exit Seth Dallaire, out! Instacart’s ad chief is jumping over to Walmart as chief revenue officer amid a shakeup in the grocery delivery service’s executive ranks, Business Insider reports. Dallaire will work to scale Walmart Connect, the retail giant’s ad platform unit – […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Kii To Success? As the ad industry struggles to come up with solutions to its identity crisis, Kinesso, IPG’s data and technology unit, claims it has the key … ahem, the Kii. That’s what Kinesso is calling its new identity offering. In a world […]

Inmar Intelligence is adding mobile to its cart. On Thursday, the retailer-focused tech and data platform reached an agreement to acquire mobile ad platform Aki Technologies to take advantage of the high-growth retail media category. Aaron Kechley, Inmar’s GM of media and SVP of strategy, declined to share a deal price. But he did elaborate […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The OOH F.U. ROI Macy’s is suing its landlord, the Kaufman Organization, to prevent the building owner from placing an Amazon billboard above the department chain’s flagship Herald Square location in New York City. Macy’s has had its own brand on the billboard for […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Rakuten Rewards, formerly Ebates, is an 800-pound gorilla in the affiliate marketing business. But what’s the point of being biggest if nobody wants to be in the affiliate business? Since its acquisition by the Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AVOD FTW When people think of Amazon video assets, it’s Amazon Prime, Twitch and Fire TV. But IMDb TV, formerly Freedive, has quietly become an important piece of Amazon’s video strategy, and may even be a golden goose of its own someday, VideoWeek reports. […]

From Instacart to Uber, a wide variety of digital businesses are realizing that they can spin up advertising businesses. Their inspiration? Amazon’s “other” revenue category. Composed mostly of advertising revenue, it’s proven to a slew of digital companies that they can gain profitability by pursuing the sky-high margins in advertising. On this week’s Big Story, […]

One of the most important trends in advertising right now is the rapid growth of ad businesses stood up by non-advertising companies. The OG of this category is Amazon. The online retailer has shown ads can be a high-margin addition to the bottom line, boosting profit without heavy upfront investments for any business with valuable […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Buy What You Know Shopify and Roku announced a partnership to bring a Roku app for CTV ad creation and campaign management to the dashboard of all Shopify merchants. The idea is to crack into the $16.4 billion that small and medium-sized businesses spend […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Gotta Spend Money To Spend Money Amazon’s ad business is blowing up. You probably knew that already. But that growth for Amazon isn’t a win for many sellers, particularly the early power users on the platform. There is heavy demand for Amazon inventory, with […]

You know you’ve won the lottery as a brand when you go viral on TikTok (for a good reason). Last year, it was Ocean Spray, and this year it’s Gap, whose vintage logo sweatshirts – the brown one, in particular – made a comeback on TikTok as an unexpected fashion trend of 2021. Gap capitalized on […]

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tale Of Two Internets Apple’s and Google’s user privacy rules have caused distress among advertisers and might reshape the internet itself, The New York Times reports. Audience-targeting tech (i.e., site tags and third-party cookies) helped morph many ad tech and social media platforms into […]

The country’s largest grocers are adapting to new shopping habits with a hybrid model that combines their brick-and-mortar footprint with online advertising platforms. Although Amazon paved the way with its ad platform and 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods, grocery giants, including Kroger and Walmart, are also investing heavily in sponsored search and programmatic. And now […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Party Line The Washington DC Attorney General’s office expanded its antitrust suit against Amazon. The complaint initially targeted Amazon’s third-party seller policies and now also encompasses first-party seller deals. The crux of the AG’s case against Amazon’s first-party seller policies is the “Minimum […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Podcast Talk Podcasting has heated up, with big M&A deals in recent years, including Amazon’s acquisition of Wondery for $300 million and Spotify’s $235 million deal for Megaphone. Podcast advertising is forecasted to exceed $2 billion by 2023, according to emarketer, which revised up […]