Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more retail media entrants, new offerings sprouted this spring.
In the past few weeks, United Airlines launched an ad offering; Costco said it’s building out an ad network; the leader of Uber’s retail media efforts, Mark Grether, hopped over to PayPal; Expedia is seeking to grow its retail media business; and Chase upped its retail media offering.
On this week’s podcast, we bring on our commerce specialist, Senior Editor James Hercher, to explain how these announcements fit into the rapidly growing retail media space. What’s driving this growth? Companies are chasing Amazon, which spun up an online advertising business to the tune of $11.8 billion just during the first quarter of this year.
But many of the brands “entering” retail media have operated advertising businesses for years under the umbrella of “shopper marketing.” For those who think retail media is a bubble, it will behoove them to remember the retail media business predates its current form. Grocery store end caps and direct mail “offers from our partner,” we salute you!
We also dissect Madhive’s recent acquisition of Frequence, which offers ad sales software that helps media companies manage their workflows from campaign planning to optimization. Madhive, a DSP that started out doing local reach extension for media companies, raised $300 million last year to fund acquisitions, though it didn’t name a deal price for this one.
From the outside, the two companies look like an odd couple, but the deal signals a few trends: the consolidation of buy-side and sell-side tech, everything becoming programmatic and the allure of companies with hooks in CTV.
