Amazon’s ad business continued to throttle up in the second quarter. The ecommerce giant’s “other” revenue category, where it houses advertising sales and services such as marketing measurement, cleared almost $2.2 billion, more than double the $945 million earned during the same period last year, according to the company’s earnings report, released Thursday. Amazon’s gross […]
Amazon Prime Day is the ecommerce leader’s biggest shopping day ever as well as an opportunity to see how the company strategically deploys its advertising and promotional products. Many retailers responded to Prime Day this year with their own deluge of special discount deals, but Amazon uniquely uses its arsenal of products, from Alexa-based voice […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Direct Control Direct-to-consumer upstarts are giving established brands a run for their money, and are also wreaking some havoc in the agency world. That’s because DTC brands are for the most part digitally native and do their advertising in-house. Despite its $1 billion acquisition […]
July is historically a slow month for the US retail industry. It splits Memorial Day and Labor Day shopping spikes, and foot traffic dwindles as consumers travel or hit the beach. But this year, ecommerce and brick-and-mortar retailers are pouncing with mid-July promotional events, hoping to seize the shopping energy stirred up by Amazon Prime […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Grow Big Or Go Home HBO is at a crossroads and its new corporate manager plans to make a change, a recording from a recent company-wide town hall meeting suggests. John Stankey, the AT&T executive who now oversees the Time Warner media properties, says […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. In-House Helpers Consultancies are cashing in on in-housing. Firms like PwC, Accenture and Deloitte are using the media transparency debate to position themselves as in-housing experts, picking up marginal revenue – and helping brands cut out agencies in the process, reports Digiday. Because consulting […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Weed Whacks Influencers Influencer marketing has a fraud problem, and Unilever CMO Keith Weed has had enough of it. At the Cannes Lions festival, Weed said Unilever will no longer work with influencers who buy followers to inflate audience and engagement metrics. Unilever will […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing Nice As he throws his energy into a new marketing investment vehicle, Martin Sorrell has no plans to undermine WPP Group, where he remains the eighth largest investor, Reuters reports. Reuters spoke with another big WPP stakeholder, Jupiter Asset Management fund manager Alastair […]
Shopper marketing, a longtime favorite of CPGs typically used for in-store signage or to get products on eye-level shelves, is undergoing a massive transformation thanks to the spread of ecommerce and online shops. Of the $178 billion marketers spend annually on in-store marketing, $55 billion could shift from traditional retail trade marketing to online ads, […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Story Time Advertising is coming to Facebook Stories, a sleeper hit on the Facebook platform that draws 150 million daily active users. Ads will be 15- to 20-second videos that users can skip and are for now limited to branding initiatives, TechCrunch reports. Click-throughs […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Amazon Ad Revenue Accelerates Revenue in Amazon’s “Other” category grew 132% YoY to $2 billion this quarter, with advertising services making up a “majority” of that segment, CFO Brian Olsavsky said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. So it’s safe to say Amazon’s ad […]
Moen’s social marketing stack used to include everything but the kitchen sink. “We used seven-plus tools to facilitate our social media program and I always say ‘use’ is a very strong word because we certainly weren’t leveraging all those tools,” said Brittany Neish, senior social strategist for kitchen and bathroom fixture manufacturer Moen. And because […]
The almighty duopoly is losing share – but just a little bit. Google and Facebook will take a 56.8% share of US digital ad spend this year, down from 58.5% in 2017, according to a report published by eMarketer on Monday. The report also predicted the duopoly’s share of new digital ad dollars entering the […]
Here’s the central mystery of our time: What will Amazon let brands do on Alexa? That’s something dressing and ingredients manufacturer Hidden Valley is testing right now, via an integrated marketing product from Allrecipes designed to link its native inventory to grocery orders on AmazonFresh. Clorox-owned Hidden Valley and other grocery brands work with Allrecipes […]
Amazon has become part of virtually every media plan and it’s only going to continue to grow. Yet, Amazon’s advertising business remains an enigma. Even its closest partners aren’t exposed to the inner workings of its ad stack. It’s also not clear how much spend flows through Amazon’s ad platform, though the investment bank BMO […]
For those whose New Year’s wish was never to see the word “duopoly” again: Take cheer! Soon we may start talking about the “triopoly” instead. Amazon’s $1 billion to $2 billion per year in ad revenue in 2017, according to eMarketer estimates, may be a pittance to the tens of billions earned by Google or […]
With the explosion of cross-screen TV, publishers and advertisers are clamoring for better discovery, personalization and cataloging of video content, and metadata is answering that call. Metadata, put simply, adds more context to data. Metadata in video can range from the contents of that video (e.g., colors, products, characters) to the way it’s classified (e.g., […]
Champagne used to be reserved for special occasions, but Moet Hennessy USA wants consumers to see its luxury products as more of an everyday utility. The company teamed up with its creative agency, Rehab, and Amazon’s voice-activated service, Alexa, to create Bottles and Bubbles, a customized “skill” or application. Once users command Alexa to “open […]
Online display advertising spend in the US will grow 70% from $42 billion this year to $72 billion by 2021, propelled mostly by social media ad spend, according to Forrester’s annual Online Display Advertising forecast, released Wednesday. As mobile adoption continues to surge, Forrester predicted, social ad spend will reach $40 billion by 2021, and […]
Amazon wants to own a greater chunk of the video supply chain. Its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, released a suite of video tools called AWS Elemental Media Services on Monday, designed to help live and on-demand video content providers manage workflow. It is available only as a managed service for now. “We’re trying to […]
While tapping into purchases helps advertisers close the loop around the actual conversion, the use cases for purchase data have evolved far beyond measurement. The use of transactional data is maturing in media activation, as is the ability to commingle it with other data sources like behavioral, location and even panels in channels like addressable […]
“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 Matt Keiser, founder and CEO at LiveIntent. While WPP’s Martin Sorrell has sounded the alarm, the rest of the industry is just catching on: Amazon is racing ahead to own […]
Although Netflix’s audience is large (and growing), it’s notoriously hard to measure. Nielsen hopes to remove some of the difficulty gauging audience viewership in ad-free environments like Netflix with its launch Wednesday of a syndicated measurement service called Nielsen Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) Content Ratings. Eight networks and studios, including A&E, Disney-ABC, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal […]
As the global COO of Merkle, Michael Komasinski keeps the proverbial engines running both internally and in the agency’s services business. After joining Merkle in 2015 from his post as COO of Razorfish North America, Komasinski helped drive 30% revenue growth across the business in 2016. Komasinski also was largely responsible for leading the integration […]
Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard is pleased overall with the response to his tough talk of the past year. And he’s optimistic that Facebook, Google and others will meet P&G’s deadline to align on third-party measurement standards and have their methods audited by the Media Ratings Council by the end of this […]
Amazon is winning a growing share of CPG media dollars, and its September announcement that it would open an office in New York City to house a major expansion of its advertising platform business means the competition will only heat up. It comes as CPG brands pulling back on digital media undercut global agencies, marketing […]
Turns out owning your own cable channel might not be the most efficient way to attract an audience. Poker Central folded its channel last December. Now the network is experimenting with new ways of distributing its content, including partnering with ESPN and NBC Sports and OTT services like Amazon-owned Twitch. It also launched its own […]
While P.F. Chang’s first order of business is stir-fry, it’s also cooking up a fresh data strategy to support its new brand push. As the owner of 212 Asian-themed concept restaurants around the globe, P.F. Chang’s strategy – and its custom-built technology stack – once primarily catered to the dine-in audience. “As takeout and third-party […]
As NBCUniversal’s portfolio has evolved, so has its sales pitch to brand marketers. When NBCU merged its linear and digital sales teams in 2015 and combined all its content groups, its client partnerships team assumed a greater role within its sales organization. That team, led by client partnerships EVP Ali Tarrant, became the broadcaster’s conduit […]
Updated with Q&A with Eric Eichmann, CEO of Criteo Criteo continues to soar high above the scrum of ad tech stocks. The company had a characteristically strong Q2, growing revenue ex-TAC by 32% to $220 million. Yet, “uncertainties” lie ahead, notably around Apple’s recent reveal that, come September, an update to its OS will include […]
