retail

DoorDash on Thursday confirmed the rumors and announced its intention to acquire Instacart at a $17 billion valuation.

Consumer spending on Black Friday Cyber Monday was up 7%. But prices are high, and it’s affluent customers who are doing the most spending in the US. Plus: the challenge of being an ad buyer managing campaigns on Meta during “Glitchmas.”

Target reported $649 million in revenue from its Roundel advertising business in 2024, up about 25% from 2023, during its Q4 and full-year earnings report on Tuesday.

In 1973, Timberland – then called Abington Shoe Company – debuted its waterproof yellow boots. In 2023, the outdoor apparel and accessories company will observe the boot’s 50th anniversary. And Ezra Martin, Timberland’s newly minted vice president of marketing, Americas, will be rolling out a new marketing strategy for the occasion. Martin shares his insights on personalized customer experiences, localized campaigns and more.

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.

Advertisers are shifting their holiday campaign strategies this Black Friday and Cyber Week, moving down the funnel in response to economic headwinds. And so we asked the experts: How are inflationary and recessionary worries impacting media plans around Black Friday and Cyber Week?

In today’s hybrid retail environment, customers can window shop in person or comparison shop online before completing their purchase in a store or on the internet. Or they partake in “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS). The need to capture the customer’s journey between online and offline behavior was the seed for Foursquare’s new Closed Loop feature, the location data platform’s latest addition to its attribution product

Retailers and big retail brands typically embark on Q4 with their plan firmly in place. Pricing and promotions, inventory deliveries and expected sales are all known factors. Companies test, learn and implement during the first nine months of the year and by the holidays they should be riding on rails. And tech providers oblige. The […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Corbin de Rubertis, head of innovation at Meredith. The pandemic accelerated many consumer trends that were already in motion, including the collapse of the traditional funnel and the proliferation of ecommerce experiences in mobile apps, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. You Got Probed The Irish aren’t so lucky, at least not for Facebook, which could lose its ability to transfer data from the European Union to the US. On Friday, Ireland’s High Court issued a ruling that allows the country’s Data Protection Commission (DPC)  […]

“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 Andrea Leigh, VP of strategy at Ideoclick We are witnessing the rise of retail media networks designed by major retailers to deliver a targeted, personalized experience to shoppers. Walmart, CVS, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Fighting Up Streams NBCUniversal will likely launch the streaming subscription service Peacock next week without Roku or Amazon Fire TV distribution deals, CNBC reports. That’s a tough pill to swallow, considering the two platforms own about 70% of the connected TV market. NBCU’s disputes […]

Walmart and Target, which both reported quarterly earnings this week, underscore how American shopping habits are being reshaped. Walmart and Target both saw a double-digit increase in average cart value (16.5% and 12.5%, respectively) and a single-digit decline in the number of transactions, since people stocked up with fewer shopping trips. Older Americans also boosted […]

A wave of new brands and merchants are adopting Shopify’s retail technology, as consumer behavior swings during the coronavirus pandemic. Shopify said during its Q1 earnings Wednesday that the number of new stores selling on its platform grew by 62% in the second half of Q1 compared to the first half, and the number of […]

Your experience scrolling your social media feed will be very different from your friend’s. But when you go into a retail store, you’ll have the same experience as everyone else who steps in. So while digital-first companies like Amazon and eBay are built to create personalized experiences, brick-and-mortar retailers are not, said Liad Agmon, founder […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Wind In DTC’s Sails Procter & Gamble’s acquisition of Billie, a shaving and body care startup focused on women, has given a boost to the DTC entrepreneur and investor community. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, so it’s unclear if it even was […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Retail and ecommerce technology companies are forecasting a strong holiday shopping season, except for one problem: the late Thanksgiving this year means there’s one fewer week in the prime shopping period between Black Friday and Christmas. But does it matter if there are fewer days for shopping sprees this year? On the one hand, US […]

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 […]

The online clothing retailer Bonobos is at the center of upheaval in US retail and ecommerce. The company was acquired by Walmart last year for $310 million and has opened 58 brick-and-mortar stores in the past seven years. Bonobos also exemplified the direct-to-consumer category in September when former CMO Micky Onvural was promoted to CEO. […]

An ad campaign launched this month by IZOD, the men’s fashion company, encapsulates the advantages of in-housing marketing, from creative strategy and production through post-campaign attribution. The company doesn’t work with outside agencies, but has an agency model that serves constituents within the company instead of various brand customers, said Mike Kelly, chief marketing officer […]

With the rapid pace of change in the advertising technology industry, a couple of years can seem like a generation of change. Which is why it was a surprise to see JB Rudelle, Criteo’s founder and CEO until 2016, return as chief executive in April, retaking the reins a month before the implementation of GDPR. […]

Criteo has lowered its full-year revenue guidance as it seeks to evolve its pricing model, the company said during its Q2 earnings call Wednesday. Other headwinds, like mobile privacy policies and GDPR regulations, did affect Criteo’s revenues as dramatically. The company initially anticipated growth between 3% to 8% and now expects growth to be flat. […]

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 […]

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, […]

The world’s largest consumer product brands are struggling to grow their US businesses. While some of the challenges are macro-economic, like increased transportation costs, the biggest factor is the growth of retail private-label brands, which can’t be acquired or stamped out like startup competitors. Large CPGs are also adjusting to new direct-to-consumer and ad-heavy startup […]

The revelation that Kroger is developing a data-driven ad platform, Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM), to launch next year underscores how brick-and-mortars are trying to exert control over their data in the same manner as an ecommerce company. Yet the goal of a true brick-and-mortar walled garden is fraught with challenges. For decades, retailers sold anonymized […]

Criteo on Friday released a suite of products, including audience matching and customer prospecting, as well as a new policy beginning in the fourth quarter to give buyers and DSPs impression-level transparency into every unit of inventory. At the heart of Criteo’s string of product releases this year is a newfound willingness among retailers and […]

Ad tech vendors are clicking “add to cart” on first-party retailer data. As brands and retailers grow more comfortable sharing first-party data, shopper marketing budgets – traditionally spent on last-leg marketing efforts like high-performing shelf space, in-store signage, coupon circulars and co-marketing (“Find us at your nearest…”) – are moving online. “Merchants are talking to me […]

The convergence of retail and ecommerce accelerated with a blockbuster Friday when it was announced that Amazon would buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion and Wal-Mart is snapping up ecommerce men’s clothing company Bonobos for $310 million. The market response to the deals was clear, particularly to Amazon’s 11-digit investment in a brick-and-mortar footprint. The […]