Getting the rundown on the products people buy in stores has long been a valuable data business. It’s spawned companies like Catalina, IRI, Circana, NCS, SPINS and more.
And, often, the value of this data increases when it’s nested within a larger company. For example, Infillion acquired Catalina this week, as it plans to infuse its DSP (
In some ways, the MediaMath DSP- Catalina data combo emulates Amazon, whose DSP is superpowered by its ecommerce sales data. But it’s also a sign of two other trends: the need for DSPs to differentiate themselves from each other and the rise of retail media networks.
For example, Walmart’s retail media business is now larger than Snapchat’s. All kinds of companies are spinning up retail media businesses, from financial services to airlines to sporting good stores. Smaller retail media businesses may struggle to scale, but sometimes niche data is the most valuable of all.
Where agencies spend clients’ money
Then, how much does a big agency spend on Google? Meta? The Trade Desk? Disney? Spotify? A slide deck submitted by WPP Media, as it fights a case against a former employee, has all the receipts. And they add up to an impressive matrix of competitive intel about how clients spend their money and where they spend the most of it.
The case concerns Richard Foster, a WPP Media exec who says he was fired after whistleblowing about improper rebates. But WPP Media’s defense includes a deck for a proposed group that would secure better media deals between the agency and top media partners, often through creative means like investing in productions together.
On this week’s podcast, we outline some of the most interesting figures from the doc – but see the rest for yourself, hosted here.
