Commerce

The No. 1 reason consumers shop online is because it’s convenient, yet online commerce still represents less than 10% of overall sales. “Why isn’t this number higher? It should be higher,” said Ken Cassar, VP and principal analyst at Slice Intelligence, at a New York City event hosted by Rakuten Marketing on Tuesday. According to […]

Walmart’s streaming movie and TV-on-demand service Vudu is rolling out free, ad-supported video. Vudu, which has been priced on a per-transaction, subscription-free basis (like iTunes), has debuted a video-on-demand service called Vudu Movies On Us. Vudu is using Telstra’s video platform subsidiary, Ooyala, to manage video ad delivery and monetization for the service, which has […]

HSN, the broadcast network dedicated to home shoppers, is finding new digital revenue streams to support its core TV business. “We’re a marketing platform for brands we sell,” said Annemarie Frank, HSN’s VP of omnichannel marketing. “A lot of the brands we work with internally and have done well with us are looking for ways […]

By Kelly Liyakasa and James Hercher Criteo’s $250 million, all-cash purchase of retail exchange HookLogic on Tuesday was premeditated. Meaning, the two companies already knew of the other’s capabilities – and a marriage felt right for the future of both ecommerce ad tech companies, said Criteo CEO Eric Eichmann. “We’d been talking to HookLogic for almost […]

French performance marketing company Criteo will acquire HookLogic, a retail exchange, ad server and attribution company focused squarely on retailers. The deal, a $250 million all-cash transaction, gives Criteo a brand new set of customers – including CPG advertisers like Clorox and Kraft. HookLogic’s performance marketing exchange enables these consumer brand manufacturers to bid on sponsored product […]

When Celestial Seasonings first redesigned its iconic packaging last summer to attract more millennial tea drinkers, it didn’t go over well. Although the Boulder, Colo.-based tea brand had invested in promotional and brand marketing to reinforce its new brand look, loyal customers weren’t having it. After engaging in consumer studies – and gathering consumer feedback […]

While consumer interest in augmented reality (AR) has risen and fallen like a tide, retailers and tech vendors see it as more than just a passing fad. Hybris Labs, the retail tech R&D division of SAP, began working on AR products in 2013 after Google Glass debuted, said Hybris Labs team lead Christian Neeb. “There […]

Every retailer that isn’t Amazon is thinking about how not to get crushed by Amazon. “Amazon is taking over retail,” said Oliver Chen, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Cowen and Co., speaking at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference in Chicago on Thursday. Based on its recent research, Cowen is betting that by 2017 Amazon […]

The shopping app Ibotta, which gives users cash back for purchases, has streamlined app-to-app buying. Tech from deep-linking vendor Button now allows Ibotta users to make purchases from apps in Button’s network, which includes Hotels.com, Groupon, Jet and Spring. Ibotta hopes to connect commerce apps into an easy-to-use marketplace. While it’s easy to link and […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Damian Garbaccio, executive vice president at Nielsen Marketing Cloud. We all know that consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies spend a lot on advertising. In the US alone, CPG and consumer […]

Despite Amazon’s legacy as a giant digital walled garden, marketers say it’s in the early stages of a major expansion into an ad platform model. Specifically, Amazon is testing ways to tie together its properties to form a more comprehensive, full-funnel offer, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the early products. Amazon didn’t return […]

Consumer packaged goods companies are going direct-to-consumer, spurred by a desire for greater data governance and less reliance on third-party retailers. As a result, the principles behind shopper marketing, which traditionally centers on in-store promotions, are blurring with brand marketing, which focuses on building brand affinity. “We’ve seen shopper marketing move from this singular approach […]

Peter Horst will speak at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference in Chicago on September 8. After decades of focus on TV and print advertising, Hershey’s is “in the early stages of a long, judicious process of building out a data operation and translating our brands to a digital mindset,” according to CMO Peter Horst. AdExchanger spoke with Horst about […]

As one of the largest ultra-low-cost carriers in the US, Spirit Airlines became synonymous with nickel and diming passengers for anything beyond a basic seat. But with a recent CEO change and a planned site relaunch this fall, Spirit is also trying to become more data-driven to improve customer retention and new passenger acquisition. “We’re […]

In 2014, Nestle Waters’ data was spread across different digital agencies and databases. “Our go-to-market strategy was very complex,” said Antonio Sciuto, EVP and CMO of Nestle Waters North America. Because Nestle Waters sold its beverages online as well as straight to stores, through single-serve machines or in bulk to warehouses, the company’s digital and […]

One year ago, eBay put its enterprise marketing assets up for sale, and its commerce platform Magento was taken private again. Now Magento is making an acquisition of its own. The company revealed on Monday it had acquired RJMetrics, a Philadelphia-based advanced analytics startup. Financial terms of the deal were not announced, but RJ Metrics […]

Through a growing number of API partnerships, car service companies like Uber and Lyft are broadening their reach across the app ecosystem. “With the proliferation of companies in the rideshare space, we’ve [seen] huge demand for people to want to move around,” said Vishay Nihalani, senior product manager at Lyft. “It’s like a basic human need at this point.” […]

On the heels of Lyft’s first national TV spot that aired this spring, the ride-sharing app’s advertising efforts are still in overdrive. As a challenger to Uber, Lyft seeks to convert willing drivers and passengers in less-penetrated markets for the brand, such as New York, by combining big brand activations (TV and out-of-home) with smaller […]

Intent data for a hotel might look very different than it does for a shampoo manufacturer. Whereas luxury and travel marketers have direct access to transaction data that can be used to target and upsell customers, CPG manufacturers often sell at the SKU level through retailers, which retain the purchase data. CPG advertisers need granular […]

Salesforce dropped $2.8 billion on ecommerce platform Demandware on Wednesday, which will underpin the creation of Salesforce’s latest business line: Commerce Cloud. The deal catapults Salesforce into the ecommerce space – a tech category largely dominated by enterprise competitors like SAP/hybris and IBM/WebSphere, though Salesforce first dabbled in ecommerce in 2012, when it acquired site […]

Since its split from PayPal – and the $925 million divesture of its enterprise technology business last summer – eBay has been relatively silent. But judging by its latest quarterly earnings in late April, eBay is busy rethinking its business strategy. The ecommerce marketplace surpassed some analysts’ expectations when it posted a 6% revenue increase […]

When Amazon debuted its Video Direct service on Tuesday, the media hailed it as a rival to YouTube. Video Direct lets content creators post and monetize video directly on Amazon’s Video and Prime platforms. Amazon isn’t commenting beyond the release, but there’s no standalone platform and the only launch partners are media publishers, film studios […]

After completing his first full quarter as CEO of performance marketing company Criteo, Eric Eichmann seems confident. Criteo had “very strong top-line growth,” Eichmann told AdExchanger ahead of the company’s Q1 earnings call on Wednesday. Revenue was up 41% year-over-year to $162 million at constant currency minus traffic acquisition costs and that performance was consistent across […]

If marketing is the creative visionary of a big brand, procurement is its practical, strict counterpart. Marketing wants to spend big on the big idea, and procurement wants to save as much as possible. The two often can’t see eye to eye – and marketing budgets suffer. At the ANA’s Financial Management Conference in Boca […]

Updated with statement from Amazon. Amazon’s forthcoming $8.99-a-month subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service offers strong new competition to Netflix and Hulu. Will it include advertising as well? Not at first, but there is an internal debate at Amazon around the proper role of ads in its video offering. According to one source with knowledge of Amazon’s […]

At Amazon Media Group (AMG), sometimes the objective isn’t to sell advertisers more ads. AMG has a lesser-known service – ecommerce marketing – where it might evaluate a partner’s broader retail health and the roles contextual elements (e.g., Amazon product detail pages), third-party placements or product availability play in the path to conversion. “You can’t […]

OwnerIQ’s unique second-party data-sharing model, where it acts as media buyer and data broker between retailers and manufacturing brands, is showing signs of breaking through the initial skepticism which accompanied second-party marketing. The Boston-based company’s $40 million revenue from 2006 to late 2014 pales compared to its $60 million spike in 2015. Second-party data involves […]

Call it the holistic grail: the ability to connect advertising, ecommerce activity and in-store buying with a single measurement. No one’s filled that gap yet, but a bunch of companies are taking incremental steps. Earlier this month the location analytics shop Placed added a product for attributing in-store lift to its suite. Then last week […]

Cardlytics, which, in its first iteration, fueled card-linked offers for banks and financial services firms, is opening up new ways to monetize around the private bank channel. The company, which sits on transactional data spanning 109 million accounts in the US alone, is eyeing longer-term deals with agency holding groups. It’s also beefing up demand […]

There’s a world of difference between achieving mass reach and engagement in multiplatform video. Just ask Stephanie Horbaczewski, CEO of the fashion and beauty multichannel video network (MCN) StyleHaul. StyleHaul was among the first YouTube MCNs to join larger companies (Maker/Disney, Fullscreen/AT&T and Chernin Group, Collective/ProSieben) when German broadcast giant RTL Group purchased a majority […]