commerce

It’s not hard to understand why Meta is prioritizing ecommerce advertising with Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, Shops and Checkout on Facebook and Instagram. Meta must reignite its overall advertising business.

The ad agency holding company WPP is on the up and up and remains confident in its clients’ continued investment in marketing projects despite a challenging macroeconomic environment. WPP is “well positioned to deliver sustainable, long-term growth” after seeing broad-based growth in 2022, said CEO Mark Read during the company’s earnings report on Thursday.

This week, we dive into Shopify, and its potential as a uniquely positioned purchase data supplier to the advertising industry with a product called Shopify Audiences.

Hey! This is James Hercher, AdExchanger’s senior editor and commerce industry beat reporter. Welcome to the inaugural dispatch of AdExchanger’s Commerce Newsletter.

Growth marketing firm Power Digital has acquired marketing consultancy Sproutward to strengthen its data and analytics chops. The acquisition is Power Digital’s fifth in the last four years.

In 2022, retail media grew to include practically any business with a first-party identity graph, purchase data and a claim to ears or eyeballs. Despite the buzz, however, retail media has a long way to go before the category is mature.

Brand safety has a hypocrisy problem. Violence that gets a pass when it’s a fictional TV show becomes flagged if it’s part of an online news story. But to what end? Plus: what Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales results portend for retailers’ prospects in Q4 and beyond.

The Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday online shopping bonanza was in full effect this year. But it’s hard to make judgements about whether this season is helping buoy retailers and brands as in years past

Founded in 2016, the male grooming company Manscaped started out primarily as a performance marketing engine. The products were simply a way for the brand to use its expertise in social media marketing and direct-to-consumer dynamics. Fast-forward six years, and Manscaped has broadened beyond one product and mobile performance marketing. In addition to launching a […]

Walmart and Target each had a similar warning for investors when they reported earnings this week. The two major US retailers expect a modest Q4 and spoke of early signs that consumers are dramatically changing their shopping patterns (yet again).

Multitouch attribution has fallen into disrepair. Facebook and Google platform attribution is a mess. User-level tracking is going the way of cigarette smoking during a pregnancy. So, what’s left for digital advertisers who need to bring performance measurement back to their media plans? Incrementality testing, it seems. “I was a little bit skeptical as to […]

Bill Michels knows programmatic data. For the past couple years, he’s led The Trade Desk’s entire product group. Now, he’s headed to Moloco, where he’s starting as general manager of the company’s retail media business unit.

Walmart Connect has gotten a lot more Connect-y of late. Now the retail media platform is striking partnerships to measure social commerce on TikTok and Snap, CTV ads on Roku and live-shopping content with companies Firework and TalkShopLive. The Walmart ad business has had bursts of new partners since it settled on The Trade Desk […]

Merkle’s retail and consumer goods group has become a testbed for multiple other verticals. Although people tend to think of retail advertising from the perspective of grocery store chains and major CPG brands (Walmart, Target, Kroger and the brands they carry), these days the “retail media” category includes a host of new entrant: Best Buy, Marriott, Lyft, Uber, craft goods store Michael’s.

Kroger Precision Marketing, the grocer’s advertising and data business, announced an expansion into CTV and video inventory channels. “It’s critical to … move into these channels that are increasing with respect to where advertisers are investing their dollars,” Kroger SVP Cara Pratt told AdExchanger.

The 2022 Inc. 5000 list was published on Tuesday, and although its purpose is mostly for marketing (companies pay for inclusion, after all), it is a useful benchmark for tracking the startup ecosystem.

In the face of a potential global recession on top of a horrendous year for ad tech stocks, companies have to find comfort in the small victories. Wednesday was one such victory for Criteo, despite a few troubling trends.

Commerce and creator monetization are Pinterest’s two main priorities right now, said Jeremy King, the company’s SVP and head of engineering. King, who is also the former CTO of Walmart’s ecommerce business – he joined Pinterest in 2019 – said that the convergence of creator revenue potential with social media-based shopping and product discovery by consumers “will make Pinterest functional, versus purely inspirational.”

Amazon disappointed investors with a $3.8 billion net loss in Q1 this year, its first quarterly loss in the past six years, plus online sales ticked down 1%. Amazon Advertising, however, did not disappoint. “Advertising revenue was up 25% year over year, and that’s a strong run rate compared to the revenue growth rate,” CFO Brian Olsavsky told investors.

Subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts. Amazon’s search algorithm uses a bunch of different signals to rank products on its landing pages, including depth of product inventory, product page richness and paid media effectiveness. It’s not unlike Google, except that all those signals result […]

Amazon’s “other” segment, which houses its advertising business, grew 73% YoY to $6.9 billion in Q1. “The advertising team has done a great job turning clicks into productive sales, and the advertising that results is valuable to us as well,” said Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky. While Amazon’s ads business grew due to traffic increases, its […]

This week on The Big Story, the team broadcasts LIVE from AdExchanger’s Innovation Labs: Commerce Day event. And here’s your main takeaway if you weren’t able to attend: the fragmentation in the world of commerce-related media is … insane. An emerging cluster of media networks from retailers  such as Walmart, Target, Kroger and numerous others […]

Over the past two years, NBCU has made inroads in the commerce arena, building capabilities that drive transactions directly and measuring those conversion events. The strategy makes sense: If you know your ad inventory drives purchases, you might as well go full Amazon and own the whole funnel. And NBCU has executed on that vision […]

“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 Mike Farrell, senior director of integrated digital strategy at Sidecar. Advertising on Amazon requires you to balance both offensive and defensive tactics. The overall goal is to appear alongside competitors and […]

Facebook on Tuesday launched a new commerce toolkit, called Shops, with a revamped model for how the company fits into the online shopping landscape. Shops will give every SMB, merchant and product company the ability to set up a virtual storefront across Facebook’s app properties. Unlike previous Facebook and Instagram commerce products, Shops will also […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Buzzing  After racking up more than $50 million in losses last year, BuzzFeed is working its way toward profitability. The digital media company laid off 250 staffers and is benefiting from new revenue streams. Sponsored content, once BuzzFeed’s crown jewel, now makes up just […]

Walmart claims its programmatic advertising platform and ads API are ready for primetime. On Friday, Walmart Media Group (WMG), the retail giant’s advertising arm, released a self-serve portal so advertisers can directly buy on-site search and sponsored product ads on walmart.com. It also launched an API to make that inventory available through Teikametrics, Flywheel Digital, […]

Pinterest really wants people to shop on its platform. The newly public company revamped its marketing partner program on Monday and added a new partner category for third-party tech providers that facilitate shopping experiences. But the rebrand of Pinterest’s Marketing Developer Partners program to a global Pinterest Partners program is more than a cosmetic change. […]

Instagram has a lot going for it right now: Millions of active advertisers, an opportunity to capitalize on commerce, impression growth, a love affair with DTC brands, the continued breakneck growth of Stories … and the fact that a lot of people still don’t necessarily associate it with Facebook. The Facebook connection has been both […]

Adobe launched a cloud product suite for retail and ecommerce technology services on Monday. The Adobe Commerce Cloud is the fourth Adobe cloud offering, joining the Experience, Advertising and Analytics clouds. The core of the new commerce package is the Magento ecommerce platform Adobe acquired a year ago for $1.68 billion, that’s now been integrated […]