Up Against The Wal(mart)
The Trade Desk has had a rough couple of weeks. Shares are down by some 40% since its earnings last Thursday, and investors are worried about the prospects of Amazon Advertising swooping in to take its business.
And the hits just keep on coming. The Information reports that The Trade Desk’s exclusive status as the off-site and infrastructure provider for Walmart Connect, Walmart’s DSP, is not so exclusive anymore.
Last year, the two companies quietly renegotiated their arrangement with a new provision that allows Walmart to also work with other ad platforms.
Walmart’s deal with The Trade Desk, which they struck in 2021, was always understood to be finite. It’s not surprising that a company of Walmart’s stature would eventually remove TTD from the equation. Just ask Walmart’s former retail media partners, like Triad.
The Trade Desk reworked its tech for Walmart so it doesn’t run on AWS, which Walmart doesn’t use. AppNexus did the same back when Walmart was its exclusive client – that is, until AppNexus lost Walmart’s business in a bake-off with TTD in 2020.
It’s likely that TTD makes relatively little profit from its Walmart business. The terms are unknown but no doubt highly advantageous to Walmart. But Walmart is one of TTD’s flagship clients and sets the DSP apart as an indie contender to Amazon.
Amazon’s Pub Pitch
It remains to be seen whether Walmart will decide to diversify its partners or bring its ad tech entirely in-house, but there’s one thing The Trade Desk can be sure of: Walmart won’t hand that business off to Amazon.
Whole categories of companies, including grocery brands, household staples, electronics manufacturers and retailers, of course, compete directly with Amazon. If you’re Duracell or Gap or Kraft, well, Amazon makes batteries, clothes and mac and cheese.
There is, however, one category where this competitive dynamic doesn’t exist and Amazon finds a warm welcome, and that’s with publishers, Digiday reports.
In May, Amazon Publisher Services, which is the Amazon Ads supply-side product suite, released its own Prebid adapter. That move puts an even more uncomfortable spotlight on Google, which is a holdout on supporting prebid header bidding.
Unlike with Google and Meta, Amazon has never really had bad blood with the publisher community. And now publishers – literally, a majority share of the web – may be looking for a new exchange partner if Google is forced to divest AdX as an antitrust remedy.
Chattin’ Up the Bots
Someday perhaps we’ll hear some good news about Meta’s AI chatbots.
But today is not that day.
Meta is under fire for an internal memo reviewed by Reuters that details the company’s policies on what type of chatbot behavior is deemed “acceptable.”
One section, which Meta claims has since been revised, includes passages that simulate romantic and sensual role-play with minors. (Meta drew the line at explicit sexual acts, but still.)
Meanwhile, Reuters reports elsewhere that, in March, an elderly man died on the way to meet a woman he’d been flirting with. That woman, “Billie,” was actually a Meta chatbot modeled after Kendall Jenner.
Both stories speak to larger existential questions about how generative AI tools can cause harm to vulnerable people. But these occurrences also don’t inspire confidence in Meta’s ability to deliver effective AI tools, which the company has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on already – with more billions earmarked for investment.
Why would a business want to try out Meta’s agentic customer support representatives, for example, if there’s a chance the agent might end up propositioning their customers?
But Wait! There’s More!
Speaking of AI chatbots, it’s a mistake to ask these tools about themselves in the first place. [Ars Technica]
Dentsu saw a slight dip in profit for the first half of the year, according to the holdco’s latest earnings report. [Campaign]
Netflix more than doubled its US upfront commitments compared to last year. [release]
An episode of Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast – guest starring Taylor Swift – crashed YouTube with just 1.3 million concurrent viewers. So what will happen when YouTube broadcasts its first live NFL game next month? [Awful Announcing]
Grok’s brief stint as a self-proclaimed “MechaHitler” cost xAI a major government contract. [Wired]
In other bad news for xAI, attorneys general from all 50 states and Washington, DC, are calling on the FTC to investigate how the company’s products are being used to create “spicy” celebrity deepfakes. [The Verge]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
