CPG

Hey readers! This is James Hercher, with the latest AdExchanger Commerce dispatch. This week, we’ll highlight a few recent CPG earnings reports, during which legacy food and beverage brands appear more optimistic about their staying power than their startup competitors.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Retail Wagging The Dog Retail media networks are advertising businesses. Usually. Sort of. For many retailers, the data-driven ad practice serves different purposes. Lowe’s announced new digital products for contractors and other professionals, reports Retail Dive.

Mondelēz-owned Chips Ahoy! wants to be Gen Z’s cookie of choice, not a nostalgic snack pick. To this end, the brand is refining its targeting strategy to focus on behaviors, not demographics.

This cough and cold season, Ricola ran shoppable influencer marketing campaigns across Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat to better attract and reach younger generations of customers.

There are three key ways in which the industry can do a better job of selling customers on the value exchange they’ll see from sharing their data with brands, writes Scott McDonald, President and CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation.

For CPG brands, valuable business lines and data access can come from unlikely sources. One such example is the Tide laundromat franchise business. Selling laundry detergent and opening laundromat franchise locations may not seem like a cutting-edge marketing tactic … but it’s arguably more exciting than anything happening in the metaverse right now.

Two years of sweeping disruptions – supply-chain shortages, staffing challenges, fluctuating COVID regulations and looming inflation – were tough on consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers and retailers. But consumers are eager to shop in stores again. As data across touch points converge, marketers have the power to elevate customer experience and increase conversions, writes Gila Wilensky, president of Xaxis US.

The twentieth century saw very little disruption for category-leading brands. Del Monte fruit, Nabisco biscuits, Gold Medal flour, Sherwin-Williams paint, Gillette razors, Lipton tea, Ivory soap – across practically every consumer business, America’s top brands in 1923 were the same category leaders 60 years later. But nearly one century on, those rankings are starting to […]

Pokémon Oreos, limited edition Sour Patch Kids, Heinz Halloween outfits and McDonald’s BTS meals. As brands go all-in on ecommerce and digital data, there’s been a notable recent uptick in their efforts to acquire first-party ecom data by dangling personalized or limited-edition products. Savvy kids might even call them thirsty, even as they enter their […]

Inmar Intelligence is adding mobile to its cart. On Thursday, the retailer-focused tech and data platform reached an agreement to acquire mobile ad platform Aki Technologies to take advantage of the high-growth retail media category. Aaron Kechley, Inmar’s GM of media and SVP of strategy, declined to share a deal price. But he did elaborate […]

The pandemic upended consumer buying habits – and the brands behind these products are not going back to their old ways. Many of the world’s largest food and beverage brands reported quarterly earnings in the past two weeks, and two important themes running throughout those calls was the sharp increase in advertising spend this year […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Agency Revival “Broad-based recovery” is the term of the week, repeated in quarterly earnings calls by ad giants like Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook, as well as the publicly traded agency holding companies, which capped off unexpectedly strong years with additional growth in Q2 […]

Getting online shoppers to click and add a product to their cart – and then have that product ship cost-effectively to a customer – is the latest challenge for CPG companies. During earnings calls over the past week, leaders of CPG companies had to answer to investors about their ecommerce strategies, which have accelerated thanks […]

Driscoll’s, the century-old fresh fruit company, is no stranger to change. But the transition to online ordering is a tricky one for the brand. Driscoll’s works with geneticists and fruit growers to hone the tastiest berry varieties, and its sales and marketing arm brings the fruit to market. But its marketing and seed-editing machine is […]

There was a time in the recent past when anytime Jon Halvorson, Mondelez’s global VP of consumer experience, wanted access to his brand’s own first-party data, the request would trigger a prolonged, nearly farcical chain of events. First, Halvorson would have to email his Google rep. Then his Google rep would email Mondelez’s agency. Then […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. What, Me Worried? Google’s planned elimination of third-party cookies has big brands revamping their data strategies, but some aren’t too worried about the looming restrictions that won’t allow individual ad targeting. Per the Wall Street Journal, Bacardi has expressed confidence in its ability to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Give It The Ol’ Rip And Replace Nielsen recently updated its panel-based currency to include data from smart TVs and set-top boxes – but an even bigger change is on the horizon. According to The Wall Street Journal, Nielsen will completely replace its TV […]

CPGs like Pepsi and Kraft-Heinz urgently need to develop ecommerce and direct-to-consumer business lines, whereas Anheuser-Busch InBev – having invested already in ecommerce – can now shift its media spend to support it. “As you’re hearing from everybody else, ecommerce has become a high-growth channel at this point,” Pepsi CEO Ramon Laguarta said Wednesday during […]

A year ago, if you overheard someone say “BOPIS is all the rage,” you could be forgiven for mistaking the reference for obscure ’90s-era slang. But nowadays, “buy online pick up in store” is as normal as, well, doing groceries. And it’s going to change retail advertising forever. Publicis Groupe forecast in 2019 that it would […]

Retail foot traffic and recessions be damned, people need to snack. That fact has boosted Mondelēz, despite the coronavirus crisis and economic downturns. And, unlike in previous recessions, Mondelēz is investing to win market share, instead of cutting spend to protect the bottom line, CEO Dirk Van de Put told investors on a quarterly earnings […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Shelf Life Many CPG brands have become iconic through the twin marketing pillars of TV advertising and in-store shopper marketing. The latter includes shelf positioning, aisle displays and end-caps, among other strategies. But linear television is steadily eroding, and access to prime shelf space […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Back In The Black Group Nine Media will turn a profit in 2020, CEO Ben Lerer shared Wednesday morning at a press breakfast. The crop of disciplined, profit-focused executives that came along with GroupNine Media’s acquisition of PopSugar at the end of last year […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Playing Chicken With TV The success of Popeyes’ recent chicken sandwich launch, which started with a runaway viral Twitter thread, manifested itself in the form of a 10.2% sales boost in its restaurants. The company let that social media wave ride out organically, pulling […]

Clorox’s Vivian Chang will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on Oct. 15 and 16. When Clorox acquired dietary supplement maker Nutranext in 2018, it wasn’t just to gain share in the health and wellness category. Nutranext already owned ecommerce health brands, like vitamin manufacturer Stop Aging Now, so the company also became […]

The US retail chain Albertsons, which also operates grocery brands like Safeway, Acme and Shaw’s, is accelerating investments in the data-driven advertising platform it launched last year for consumer brands carried in stores. The idea is to turn its retail loyalty card programs into an advertising and attribution engine, since those shoppers can be tracked […]

Claritas acquired the CRM and identity company AcquireWeb on Tuesday, the third in a yearlong buying spree as Claritas revamps its traditional audience segment business for real-time, data-driven media. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Claritas will gain 20-30 AcquireWeb employees. In the past year Claritas has also added Geoscape, a multicultural audience […]

Keith Weed announced Thursday that he will step down from his role as Unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer in April. Weed has worked for Unilever for more than 35 years, the last eight as Unilever’s top marketer. His departure, which he announced in a tweet, has been planned for more than a year. It […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Collective Sigh Visto, the company formerly known as Collective, filed for bankruptcy protection and has reached a “stalking horse” deal to sell its assets to largest investor Zeta in a $15 million all-stock deal. The court filing gives a glimpse of just how tough […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Alessandro De Zanche, an audience and data strategy consultant. At an event I attended a few weeks ago, there was a broadcaster with a strong digital presence and a CPG brand on stage discussing […]

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