January 8th-January 14th // Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Disney and friends are backtracking on Venu (again) and T-Mobile made a big, surprising splash. But the top story is Amazon’s new product which is for… its competitors?

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Top Stories 👁️ 

Amazon aims to expand advertising business by letting retailers use its ad tools on their stores
Source: CNBC
January 9th, 2025

Summary: US retailers will soon be able to use Amazon’s ad tech tools to sell product ads in their online stores. The new offering called Amazon Retail Ad Service is built on AWS and in beta testing with smaller retailers iHerb, Oriental Trading Company, and Weee!, with Tilly's joining soon. Retailers can use the service to sell contextual ads on their sites, including in search results and product pages. Fees for the service will be based on usage. Retailers can choose the creative format, placement, and number of ads that run on their sites. Amazon’s machine learning models and ad measurement and reporting tools are also available through the service. 

Amazon says the service will help retailers easily connect to brands using Amazon Ads. It pits Amazon against other retail ad tech companies like Criteo, Epsilon, and Koddi, opening a new front in Amazon’s ad strategy. Other companies are also building ad tech tools for retailers, including Microsoft, which just announced two platforms to help retailers use first-party data to target shoppers with ads from non-endemic brands and manage brand relationships.

Amazon has built ad tech tools like a demand-side platform (DSP) but hasn't been involved in selling ads for other retailers until now. It generated $14.3B in ad revenue last quarter, mostly from sponsored product ads in its search results and product pages.

Opinion: On the surface, this is a bit of a head-scratcher. Most retailers view Amazon as their single, greatest threat. Companies like Criteo and Koddi pitch retailers on the vision that they can compete with Amazon by using their tech. So why would retailers turn to Amazon to help them compete with… Amazon? And why would Amazon want to enable this?

From the retailers’ perspective, working with Amazon may open up a spigot of ad demand from brands that they just can’t access elsewhere or on their own. And at the end of the day, cold, hard cash speaks louder than a vision. 

From Amazon’s perspective, as the leader in commerce media, lifting all commerce media boats can only help them. Being able to pitch brands on the idea of running ads across many different retailers, including Amazon’s, through a single buy would be extremely enticing. It would bring more dollars into the commerce media ecosystem, benefiting Amazon. It would also be nice for Amazon to have many of their competitors in their back pocket.

Remember when Google, the publisher, started selling tech to its competitors, other publishers? That worked out pretty well for Google…

Other Notable Headlines ✍️

Disney, WBD, Fox pull plug on Venu Sports streaming service before launch - Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox Corp., and Disney have shelved their joint sports streaming service just four days after Disney announced it would merge Hulu + Live TV with Fubo, which ended Fubo's lawsuit to block Venu. As part of that deal, Disney, Fox, and WBD are supposed to pay Fubo $220M and Disney would loan Fubo $145M. It's not clear how Venu's collapse will impact the deal, which seemed as if it was made to clear the path for Venu to move forward. However, after the deal was announced, DirecTV and Dish asked a judge to reconsider dismissing Fubo’s case, which would have caused even more delays and uncertainty for Venu's launch. More like VeNO! Instead, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox, and Disney say they will focus on their existing products and distribution channels. Disney will also likely focus on its flagship ESPN streaming platform.

TikTok Stars and Marketers Brace for App’s Disappearance This Month🔒 - An estimated $8B in US ad spend flowed through TikTok last year, and now brands and creators are facing the possibility that that number may nosedive to zero in 2025. Unless the Supreme Court steps in—which seems unlikely based on its lukewarm reception to TikTok's arguments last week—the platform may shut down on Sunday. Some brands are moving their ad campaigns from TikTok to Instagram to avoid disruptions. Other brands that work with TikTok creators are reportedly extending their contracts to other platforms, while creators are ramping up collecting their followers' email addresses and phone numbers so they can find them elsewhere. Instagram and YouTube stand to gain the most from a TikTok ban, as well as competitors like Triller, which has launched a website to help creators upload their TikTok videos to Triller. But with Donald Trump taking office on Jan. 20, it's unclear how long TikTok will be dark since Trump seems to have developed a soft spot for the platform and may lobby Congress to reverse the ban. If the ban does go into effect, the ripple effect will be felt across the entire industry in a major way.

Advertisers say Meta's content-moderation changes make them uneasy. They won't stop spending. - Many don't expect Meta's recent decision to discontinue third-party fact-checking to hurt its ad business, even though the news worries some advertisers. That's because brands rely on Meta for its massive audience and ad performance. The conversation around brand safety is evolving and has become a political issue🔒as Trump prepares to take office. Meta will shift to a Community Notes tool in place of fact-checkers to mitigate misinformation, similar to X's approach. Some might say that X has declined in quality, leading many users and advertisers to leave the platform, although some brands have returned. It's unclear if Meta's platforms will follow a similar trajectory, but for now at least, it seems advertisers will stick around. 

A breach of Gravy Analytics’ huge trove of location data threatens the privacy of millions - Unacast reported a data breach and hack at its subsidiary Gravy Analytics, a data broker the FTC banned from “selling, disclosing, or using sensitive location data in any product or service.” The hacker published some of the location data from top consumer phone apps, or about 30M location data points. Gravy Analytics sources a lot of its data from real-time ad auctions. Some of the apps that may have unknowingly shared this information with Gravy Analytics include Grindr and Tinder.

Dentsu Americas CEO Michael Komasinski Is Out🔒 - Michael Komasinski has resigned as CEO of Dentsu Americas to become CEO of Criteo. In his place, Dentsu has appointed Giulio Malegori as chairman and acting CEO. It's an expanded role, with Malegori also continuing to serve as EVP and global COO of Dentsu Group. Komasinski worked at Dentsu for five years after spending nearly a decade with Merkle, including as its CEO for two years. Malegori has worked at Dentsu for 15 years, beginning as CEO for Italy before rising through the ranks. Komasinski will replace Criteo CEO Megan Clarken, who announced her retirement last year.

Publicis Worldwide and Leo Burnett merge to form Leo - Publicis Groupe's hopes its new creative unit, Leo, will help it better unite creative with data at a time when generative AI is on the rise. Leo will be a powerhouse, headcount wise, with 8K creative employees from Leo Burnett and 7K from Publicis Worldwide, across 90 countries. Co-Presidents Marco Venturelli, Agathe Bousquet, and Chief Strategy Officer Gareth Goodall will lead Leo and help clients leverage Publicis' data, tech, and media assets. Amid the agency holding company landscape, Publicis has emerged as a clear leader, but will have to contend with the newly formed Omnicom-IPG holding company. That merger is projected to close in the second half of the year.

Mars Petcare is testing direct SSP buying for CTV ads🔒 - Mars Petcare has been pruning its connected TV (CTV) partners to increase unique reach and reduce its frequency. In a campaign last year to promote Greenies pet treats, the brand used PubMatic to connect directly with publishers rather than use its usual DSPs, The Trade Desk and Google DV360. The test trimmed its supply path and eliminated tech taxes and other intermediary fees, enabling Mars Petcare to reallocate 8% more of its budget to media placements, while exceeding its sales lift goal by 20% and incremental sales targets by 126%. Mars Petcare isn't ready to fully ditch DSPs but plans to explore more specific scenarios in it can use PubMatic and other SSPs to connect directly to publishers.

LiveRamp and Mohegan Launch Industry’s First Casino Media Network - The network will let brands use Mohegan's first-party data to reach its guests and players and measure campaign performance across Mohegan's digital channels and IRL experiences, including in-app, loyalty programs, slot machines, and kiosks. Mohegan delivers 200M impressions per month, the partners say. Casinos make a ton of sense for the red-hot commerce media space, as they offer loyalty programs and other perks to stay connected to their customers, yielding loads of first-party data. Everything is an ad network. Even the roulette wheel!

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

Meta Trials eBay Listings on Facebook Marketplace Following EU Antitrust Pressure 🔒- The EU fined Meta $840M for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook, violating antitrust rules. In response, Meta will let people browse eBay listings on Facebook Marketplace and complete their transaction on eBay as part of a test in Germany, France, and the U.S.

Google’s search market share drops below 90% for first time since 2015 - Google’s global search market share was 89.34% in October, 89.99% in November, and 89.73% in December.

Contentstack acquires CDP Lytics - Contentstack, a composable digital experience platform, will use CDP Lytics’s first-party data to supplement its CMS.

No, No, No, Ozempic? RFK Jr.’s Plan to Ban Big Pharma Ads Could Hit TV Networks Hard - The pharmaceutical industry will spend an estimated $5 billion-plus on national linear TV advertising in 2024—and billions more spent on digital and streaming ads.

Disney Expands ‘Magic Words’ Ad Feature To Live Programming, Touts Other Tech Advancements At CES Showcase - Magic Words uses AI and scene-level metadata to help advertisers capture a specific emotion, mood, or moment to help their reach their desired audiences "at just the right moment." 

That’s It For This Week 👋

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