Pub Crawl
Dotdash Meredith (DDM) has hired Jim Lawson, previously CEO of the now Cadent-owned ad-buying platform AdTheorent, to run its ad tech division D/Cipher, Axios reports.
D/Cipher began as a contextual product to target ads across DDM’s portfolio without cookies. D/Cipher+, which DDM officially launched on Monday, expands that solution to non-DDM sites. For starters, however, D/Cipher+ will prioritize sites that are similar to DDM’s own properties, such as food and lifestyle content.
Lawson isn’t the only DSP vet that DDM has tapped to lead D/Cipher. Lindsay Van Kirk, who now serves as SVP and GM, previously built DSP tech for AppNexus/Xandr. These buy-side hires are particularly interesting, because DDM has teased adding self-serve buying features to D/Cipher, which would be a noteworthy move for a publisher.
DDM has its work cut out. Other well-known publishers with scaled traffic have tried – and later quit – the ad tech software licensing game. Vox Media, for example, had a homegrown CMS called Chorus, which it abandoned, and The Washington Post, after its acquisition by Jeff Bezos, embraced and then discontinued Zeus, its ad tech business.
But there is some precedent for success. Future Media, which owns magazine and digital media titles, launched its Elevate service last year, and licenses internal software for other publishers.
The Moving Target
Can Target become a true advertising powerhouse?
Target made $649 million in ad revenue in 2024, up from $522 million the year before. Hardly peanuts, but Walmart made $4 billion from advertising in 2024, and Amazon earned orders of magnitude more at $56 billion.
Walmart has a paid membership program, which has a bunch of different benefits, including a Paramount+ subscription (with ads, natch), whereas Target’s program is free to join and is primarily focused on collecting phone numbers.
Target excels in total addressable audiences, Digiday reports. According to Publicis-owned retail media agency Mars United, Target Roundel boasts 165 million unique users to Walmart’s 120 million.
But big as Target is, it’s a loser in the new era of retail scale dynamics. In 2024, Walmart added $1.3 billion to its ads business, which is multiple Roundels worth of revenue.
Buying into retail advertising is a tougher proposition now, too. A few years ago, Target was a $100 billion company, and Roku, for instance, would have been a reasonable acquisition. Since then, Target’s market cap has halved and a target like Roku would be too big to digest.
Meanwhile, Walmart acquired Vizio for $2.3 billion, providing a major boost to its advertising business.
Fizz, Sparkle, Pop
Was it a bubble?
Pardon the pun, but the soda wars are reaching the next stage of maturity. Which is to say that the upstarts are being acquired and squeezed out by incumbents.
Coca-Cola launched a prebiotic soda brand last month under its Simply juice brand. And Pepsi got involved in a big way with the acquisition this week of Poppi for about $1.65 billion, Bloomberg reports.
Pepsi already launched its own soda brand Bubly. But now it’s getting into “functional soda,” which often goes by terms like “probiotic,” “prebiotic” and “gut healthy.” Soda brands like Poppi and Olipop took off because of adept social marketing and the trend of consumers opting for what they perceive to be healthier food and beverage options.
But Poppi was sued last year for deceptive ad claims. Apparently, according to the suit, people would have to drink so many cans before actually gaining the prebiotic benefits that the sugar content would be terrible for gut health.
Poppi and Olipop, its main startup competitor, grew their combined share of US carbonated beverage sales from 1.4% in 2023 to 2.7% last year. The question now is whether the prebiotic soda category – currently worth about $1 billion – eventually folds into the overall soda category and what that means for ad budgets.
But Wait! There’s More
Microsoft accidentally wiped out Copilot in its latest Windows 11 update. [The Verge]
Digital and broadcast media companies have reprogrammed to fit the Trump administration’s anti-DEI agenda. [Wired]
AI slop constitutes a brute force attack on the algorithms that feed most people their online news and entertainment. [404 Media]
Hershey’s Vinny Rinaldi: Redefining effective reach and moving beyond ineffective scale. [post]
