Walmart

Retailers court luxury goods to compete with Amazon; indie agency Tombras acquires Opinionated; and talk of an AI bubble dominates discussion at Davos.

You are not immune to shopaganda; AI responses are more limited than retailers would like; and FIFA is forcing ad-mandated water breaks.

America’s biggest department stores are changing, and changing fast.

AudienceMix, a new curation startup, aims to make it more cost effective to mix and match different audience segments using only the data brands need to execute their campaigns.

Walmart’s AI shopping deal with ChatGPT might ding its retail media biz; the MRC shares updates on which platforms won and lost accreditation; and kids’ sports streaming is becoming a real media channel.

Marketing films is one battle after another; AI gets stymied by the cloud; and bots are causing brand backlash.

Private equity firm Novacap acquires IAS; many large online retailers are seeing an uptick in referral traffic from ChatGPT; and the IAB downgraded its US ad spend projection for the rest of the year.

The FTC probes Google and Amazon over transparency in their search businesses; Walmart will only allow authorized sellers; and Perplexity’s ad business garners criticism.

Concrete findings on how effective QR codes are at driving ad interactions are now available, and some industry best practices are emerging.

Google’s SSP tries to cut out its DSP ahead of a possible ad tech breakup; Perplexity’s head of ads skips town; and Amazon’s search ad pause flooded the market with big spenders.

Walmart’s CTV and DSP business shine in a meh Q2; plummeting search traffic is blowing up cost-per-click pricing; and TikTok annoys brands with its black box optimization.

Walmart has some new rules for third-party sellers; WPP wins Mastercard; and marketers should get into VTubers.

When it comes to the red-hot retail media sector, history doesn’t have to repeat itself. Here’s how to add accountability and transparency to a space where those attributes are sorely lacking.

Walmart is loving its ad business more every day; AI agents are coming to destroy everything; YouTube is trying to win over brands.

Why did Walmart buy Vizio? What happens when a CTV campaign turns on the S&P500+? Is Google losing its search engine edge?

Amazon’s ad tech ambitions are crowding out Amazon specialists; EU regulators have concerns about Apple ATT; and Google says breaking it up could threaten national security.

Walmart’s ad business is starting to click. The company generated $4.4 billion in global ad revenue in 2024, up  27% year-over-year, the company disclosed in its latest earnings report on Thursday.

AirBNB starting an ad service business is “not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.”  Plus, Walmart is winning.

Criteo’s Brian Gleason shared how it is working with agencies to capitalize on curation and measurement opportunities in retail media and CTV.

Meta recently revisited its goal to create AI-generated “characters” — which backfired. Plus, Apple’s trying to avoid a class-action lawsuit.

The IAB gave us new retail media standards for Christmas. But will the industry actually adopt them? Plus: how AI will be used in advertising in 2025.

Here are 12 essential tips to help advertisers optimize their retail media investments and thrive in this fierce new arena, based on insights from the ANA’s Retail Media Networks Fair.

Walmart’s latest data play: an app for unlocking barricades on store shelves; training generative AI may rely more on scraping big-name sites than previously thought; and tracking the issues that mattered most to Trump and Harris, based on ad spending.

Nielsen has received accreditation from the MRC for a product that integrates a broadcaster or media company’s first-party streaming data into Nielsen’s TV panel ratings.  Plus, Google launches a curation service that bundles ad inventory within its own Google Ad Manager.

Is it time to retire references to the advertising “duopoly?” Plus, Omnicom wants to bring its major agency brands under unified leadership.

In today’s newsletter: Walmart’s hottest growth drivers are ads and subscriptions; why The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0 could be regulators’ next target; and how the growth of CTV content fortresses is preventing breakout streaming hits.

In today’s newsletter: To boost its ads biz, Walmart will show in-store ads for non-endemic brands; Hyve Group buys Possible; and the Senate advances KOSA and COPPA 2.0, but the bills face obstacles in the House.

Upfront negotiations might take longer than normal this year. Plus, Meta is already in hot water with the EU’s new digital regulations.

In today’s newsletter: Google tries to buy its way out of a jury trial in the DOJ’s antitrust case against its ads business; Walmart sees some of its best margins on ad sales; and TikTok tests 60-minute videos.

In today’s newsletter: Companies looking to sell data target the US market; which media companies to bet on at TV upfronts; and generative AI data licensing is the new publisher revenue stream.