Commerce

Pinterest’s main focus is making it easier for users to buy through its platform. “We’re all in on shopping,” CRO Bill Watkins told AdExchanger.

The killer application for generative AI tech in TV advertising right now is very simple: auto-creating videos that small and local businesses can use to run CTV and streaming TV ads.

Two startups team up to help brands target TV viewers based on what – and where – they buy. Meanwhile, TikTok remains in will-they-won’t-they purgatory.

Meta recently revisited its goal to create AI-generated “characters” — which backfired. Plus, Apple’s trying to avoid a class-action lawsuit.

Dealmaking and AI (and blackjack) are top of mind for those heading to CES. Plus, don’t expect brands to reengage with hard news in 2025.

As seemingly every industry embraces retail media, grocery chains stand out with unique shopper data and insight into the real purchase behaviors of consumers.

2024’s most popular guest columns offer a snapshot of an industry in flux – and one that’s grown cynical due to repeated promises of unrealized change.

Google plans to create an “AI Mode” for its web search engine users. Plus, the social media vultures now circling the air above TikTok.

The IAB gave us new retail media standards for Christmas. But will the industry actually adopt them? Plus: how AI will be used in advertising in 2025.

Achieving consensus on the definitions for even baseline retail media metrics required a tough 18-month slog. Unfortunately, this was the easy part.

After more than three years as SVP of retail media at Albertsons, Kristi Argyilan is taking a ride over to Uber to lead its advertising business.

The in-game advertising market’s stagnation is both unsurprising and frustrating. The onus is on the gaming industry to make gaming an essential channel for advertisers, rather than a nice-to-have.

What is incrementality testing? “I’ve been doing more interviews with journalists lately and realize I need a better answer to this question,” says Haus Head of Strategy Olivia Kory.

AppLovin’s ecommerce advertising beta program has sparked optimism and speculation. Plus, the results of YouTube’s auto-reply program have been mixed.

Cleaning the programmatic supply chain is slow going. Plus, Shopify’s ecommerce ad product will soon be available to all Shopify merchants.

Retail media and tech platforms now represent a return to agency scale dynamics. The proposed Omnicom and IPG merger is the latest example.

Antitrust regulation has counterintuitively favored the biggest ad industry players. Plus, another streaming service, anyone?

Publishers expect the agencies will eliminate tech redundancies as they consolidate, which could compel pubs to shed redundant tech themselves. The merger could also entrench principal-based buying, which may not be a bad thing.

AS Beauty has been using the enterprise version of Shopify Shop Campaigns to acquire new customers and only pay for those that convert. Shop Campaigns went GA for all merchants on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be harder for [indie agencies] to compete,” said Rob Rivenburgh, the CEO of Mars United, who also now leads the Publicis Commerce global group.

Ad industry growth will slow to single-digits next year; consolidation hits the CPG market; and predicting the future of the FTC based on a commissioner’s pitch to the president-elect.

Curation is a reaction to programmatic’s worsening queries-per-second problem, says Permutive’s Joe Root. DSPs are biased toward impressions that have an identifier attached, so SSPs are using curated deal IDs as a stand-in for third-party cookies.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

This year, Black Friday stretched on for days and days. And the retail holidays is evolving in other ways, as online shopping takes over.

Retailers should always have a shopper-first mentality – and sometimes that may mean having to deprioritize their retail media business.

Personalization and customization are great, but when marketers go overboard with targeting, they don’t cast a wide enough net to attract new customers and foster growth, says JP Jansen, SVP of marketing and CMO for North America at Mars Pet Nutrition.

Western Union – which, fun fact, sent its first telegrams across the American frontier in the early 1850s – launched a media network last month that reaches 150 million people.

Black Friday ecommerce continues to surge, mainly on mobile; social platforms pull optimization features for health and beauty brands; and Google’s antitrust lawyers subpoena info about rival AI search startups.

Despite CEO Jeff Green’s denials, the rumors turned out to be true: The Trade Desk has spent the last three years quietly building its streaming OS, called Ventura, to compete with the likes of Roku, Amazon’s Fire TV and Google’s Android.

Dustin Hinz is CMO of Firestone Walker Brewing, which just launched its first non-alcoholic beer line. Now comes the marketing challenge.