AdExchanger Commerce

This week, I’m examining how the era of standalone walled gardens and content fortresses has given way to new forms of ad platform partnerships.

This week, the AdExchanger Commerce newsletter examined a microcosm of the affiliate marketing and ecommerce business in the form of CNN Underscored, the news company’s product-selling site and content marketing unit.

Advertising and product pricing are opposite sides of the same coin, which begs the question: To reach a new customer, are you better off spending another dollar on advertising or dropping your price by $1?

There are signs of soft consumer spending this holiday season, and retailers and big online marketplaces are pushing harder than ever to bring down prices and promote discounts.

For many, the holidays start with the post-Thanksgiving shopping weekend. For me, holiday traditions begin in late October, when the Meta ad platform goes haywire. 

On Amazon’s earnings call last week, CEO Andy Jassy said the company has “barely scraped the surface” of its advertising business potential. Generating $12 billion in ad revenue last quarter doesn’t seem like “barely” scratching the surface. But Jassy’s right – Amazon Ads is just getting started.

Programmatic retail media is stuck in a holding pattern until there are OpenRTB standards – the protocols for automated online advertising – that address sponsored listings.

DTC brand operators and other ecommerce marketers are attracted to expertise coming from someone who can show how they made it work for themselves “with skin in the game,” says Barry Hott, a marketing consultant and new head of growth for the DTC candy brand Rotten.

Some form of retail media standardization seems inevitable at this point. But retail media campaigns defy the notion of standardization.

This week, we’re digging into the DTC biz. Not the metrics or the paid media, exactly, but the information and personal support systems that have grown up as people in the industry experienced wild ups and downs of both business and personal well-being.

It’s called “Prime Day” because you need a Prime, but the other definition of the word “prime” is rather apt. Amazon’s real superpower is its indivisibility.

“Performance marketing and growth hacking ruined a generation of startups,” according to Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman.

Motion raised $6 million this week and is riding a wave of creative-focused martech, such as Memorable AI raising $2.5 million last October and ad tech vet Omar Tawakol launching Rembrand in February.