Commerce

It’s no longer a secret that Amazon is becoming a dominant player in the digital advertising industry. It’s also no secret among agency buyers that Amazon’s platforms are notoriously difficult to use. While forgiving Amazon’s ad platform for being a work-in-progress, agencies complain of clunky interfaces, limited automation and minimal reporting granularity. The lack of […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Money On My Mind Recent data scandals haven’t stopped Facebook from asking US banks for information about their customers, The Wall Street Journal reports. Over the past year, Facebook has approached Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and US Bancorp for data, including user credit […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hey, Big Spender Amazon may be raking in billions from its ad business, but it’s also spending a ton on programmatic advertising. The ecommerce giant was the biggest programmatic spender during the first quarter of this year, according to a report from MediaRadar. Amazon […]

Criteo has lowered its full-year revenue guidance as it seeks to evolve its pricing model, the company said during its Q2 earnings call Wednesday. Other headwinds, like mobile privacy policies and GDPR regulations, did affect Criteo’s revenues as dramatically. The company initially anticipated growth between 3% to 8% and now expects growth to be flat. […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Opera, The Other Operator The Norwegian software company Opera, maker of eponymous web browsers and mobile apps, IPO’d on the Nasdaq stock exchange last Friday, raising about $115 million. Opera has a 2% sliver of the global browser market but hopes to grow along […]

Amazon’s ad business continued to throttle up in the second quarter. The ecommerce giant’s “other” revenue category, where it houses advertising sales and services such as marketing measurement, cleared almost $2.2 billion, more than double the $945 million earned during the same period last year, according to the company’s earnings report, released Thursday. Amazon’s gross […]

Amazon Prime Day is the ecommerce leader’s biggest shopping day ever as well as an opportunity to see how the company strategically deploys its advertising and promotional products. Many retailers responded to Prime Day this year with their own deluge of special discount deals, but Amazon uniquely uses its arsenal of products, from Alexa-based voice […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Claws Down The bidding war between Comcast and Disney for 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets has finally come to an end, with Comcast backing down after Disney’s $71.3 billion counterbid. Comcast will focus instead on beating Fox to acquire Sky, the British satellite TV […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Direct Control Direct-to-consumer upstarts are giving established brands a run for their money, and are also wreaking some havoc in the agency world. That’s because DTC brands are for the most part digitally native and do their advertising in-house. Despite its $1 billion acquisition […]

July is historically a slow month for the US retail industry. It splits Memorial Day and Labor Day shopping spikes, and foot traffic dwindles as consumers travel or hit the beach. But this year, ecommerce and brick-and-mortar retailers are pouncing with mid-July promotional events, hoping to seize the shopping energy stirred up by Amazon Prime […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Grow Big Or Go Home HBO is at a crossroads and its new corporate manager plans to make a change, a recording from a recent company-wide town hall meeting suggests. John Stankey, the AT&T executive who now oversees the Time Warner media properties, says […]

Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club went from upstarts to behemoths, shaking up the century-old razor category in just a few short years. But there’s still more market share to shave off the top. What about women’s razors? That’s the question that Billie, a razor subscription service for women founded last year, is aiming to answer. […]

by Allison Schiff, Alison Weissbrot, Sarah Sluis, James Hercher and Ryan Joe Getting a big brand to shift its marketing approach is about as easy as moving a planet out of orbit. Yet, many see the writing on the wall: If they don’t change, consumers will leave them behind. As such, big marketers have to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. In-House Helpers Consultancies are cashing in on in-housing. Firms like PwC, Accenture and Deloitte are using the media transparency debate to position themselves as in-housing experts, picking up marginal revenue – and helping brands cut out agencies in the process, reports Digiday. Because consulting […]

Unilever CMO Keith Weed gave influencer marketing a black eye at Cannes this year with a call for brand marketers to demand more transparency and accountability in their dealings with social trendsetters. It’s about time the industry took a more critical view, said Ahalogy’s CEO and co-founder, Bob Gilbreath. Ahalogy is an influencer marketing ad […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Weed Whacks Influencers Influencer marketing has a fraud problem, and Unilever CMO Keith Weed has had enough of it. At the Cannes Lions festival, Weed said Unilever will no longer work with influencers who buy followers to inflate audience and engagement metrics. Unilever will […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing Nice As he throws his energy into a new marketing investment vehicle, Martin Sorrell has no plans to undermine WPP Group, where he remains the eighth largest investor, Reuters reports. Reuters spoke with another big WPP stakeholder, Jupiter Asset Management fund manager Alastair […]

Shopper marketing, a longtime favorite of CPGs typically used for in-store signage or to get products on eye-level shelves, is undergoing a massive transformation thanks to the spread of ecommerce and online shops. Of the $178 billion marketers spend annually on in-store marketing, $55 billion could shift from traditional retail trade marketing to online ads, […]

Adobe said Monday it will buy the ecommerce platform Magento for $1.68 billion. Magento’s 2017 revenue was $150 million, and the deal is expected to close by the end of August. Ecommerce has long been a big hole in Adobe’s tech, even as competitors spent heavily to acquire Magento’s competitors. SAP has owned hybris since […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Story Time Advertising is coming to Facebook Stories, a sleeper hit on the Facebook platform that draws 150 million daily active users. Ads will be 15- to 20-second videos that users can skip and are for now limited to branding initiatives, TechCrunch reports. Click-throughs […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Amazon Ad Revenue Accelerates Revenue in Amazon’s “Other” category grew 132% YoY to $2 billion this quarter, with advertising services making up a “majority” of that segment, CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. So it’s safe to say Amazon’s ad […]

AdRoll and Magento Commerce announced a partnership on Friday to combine the companies’ ecommerce platforms, incorporating AdRoll’s ad targeting and attribution directly into the Magento cloud management service for online sellers. Bay Alarm Medical, which sells medical alert systems, has been working with Magento for four years and with AdRoll for almost a decade, said […]

Brands like Uber, Ubisoft and Bayer have evolved their programmatic in-housing tactics in recent years – and all three outlined those changes at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco Wednesday. In the early days of in-housing, brands often bit off more than they could chew – or lacked the proper resources to implement and maintain […]

Because it can take a month or more to tie digital media to offline purchases, CPGs like Del Monte are used to relying on proxy metrics like viewability or engagement. But Del Monte is piloting an Amobee product released Wednesday called Sales Accelerator, which aims to collapse that timeline to about a week and help […]

Since Guillaume Lelait was promoted March 20 from Fetch’s US managing director to its first-ever US CEO, he’s inherited a wealth of operations and clients. He’s also inherited an ongoing lawsuit with former client Uber. Last September, Uber sued Fetch for $40 million after accusing the agency of buying click fraud to take credit for […]

Moen’s social marketing stack used to include everything but the kitchen sink. “We used seven-plus tools to facilitate our social media program and I always say ‘use’ is a very strong word because we certainly weren’t leveraging all those tools,” said Brittany Neish, senior social strategist for kitchen and bathroom fixture manufacturer Moen. And because […]

The almighty duopoly is losing share – but just a little bit. Google and Facebook will take a 56.8% share of US digital ad spend this year, down from 58.5% in 2017, according to a report published by eMarketer on Monday. The report also predicted the duopoly’s share of new digital ad dollars entering the […]

Here’s the central mystery of our time: What will Amazon let brands do on Alexa? That’s something dressing and ingredients manufacturer Hidden Valley is testing right now, via an integrated marketing product from Allrecipes designed to link its native inventory to grocery orders on AmazonFresh. Clorox-owned Hidden Valley and other grocery brands work with Allrecipes […]

Uber has the pedal to the metal when it comes to paid social automation. The ride-sharing app embeds performance marketing and paid social teams in every region where it does business. Four channel managers on each team make sure campaigns meet their objectives. On Facebook and Instagram, where Uber spends a significant portion of its […]

The world’s largest consumer product brands are struggling to grow their US businesses. While some of the challenges are macro-economic, like increased transportation costs, the biggest factor is the growth of retail private-label brands, which can’t be acquired or stamped out like startup competitors. Large CPGs are also adjusting to new direct-to-consumer and ad-heavy startup […]