May 20th-May 27th // Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Walmart (👎): Revenue was up 7.3% to $177.8B, beating estimates. Global ad revenue was up 37%, and e-commerce sales were up 26% globally. But current quarter guidance missed expectations as high gas prices are expected to pressure consumers even more in Q2. Shares fell 8%.

Perion (👎): Revenue was up 1% to $90.4M, missing estimates. Ad solutions revenue fell 4% to $66.7M as the legacy ad business struggled. Growth initiatives showed promise, with its Outmax AI agent spend up 316%, CTV spend up 68%, and DOOH spend up 29%. Perion reiterated full-year guidance. Shares fell 16%.

OpenAI hires ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming to lead business marketing push🔒 - Fleming brings 13 years of experience at Salesforce and 2+ years as ServiceNow's CMO to the role, and will report to OpenAI's chief revenue officer. Another yet-to-be-named CMO🔒 will focus on consumer growth. The hire comes as OpenAI is aggressively building out its ad business, moving beyond big brand partnerships toward smaller advertisers🔒 and performance marketing. OpenAI recently launched a self-service ad portal with no minimum spend, introduced cost-per-click pricing, and is now testing conversion-oriented ad formats that only charge advertisers when users take action. The company is targeting $2.4B in ad revenue this year, with ambitions to reach $102B by 2030. The push is also happening against a competitive backdrop, with Anthropic gaining ground in enterprise adoption and both companies reportedly eyeing IPOs.

Quick Take: ServiceNow is a B2B company that sells products to CTOs and CIOs. Salesforce is a B2B company that sells products to CTOs, CIOs, and CMOs. OpenAI wants to become a B2B company that sells products to CTOs, CIOs, and, you guessed it, CMOs! Great hire!

AppLovin quietly launches a social app called Gist after losing out on TikTok🔒 - AppLovin has not formally launched Gist yet, limiting access to those with a referral code. The app mixes photo carousels, short videos, and mini-games, drawing comparisons to TikTok, Lemon8, and RedNote. AppLovin's product and engineering chief said earlier this year that the goal is to bring exclusive, monetizable traffic in-house. When it was in the hunt for TikTok, AppLovin's CEO had argued that the company's proven ad revenue machine could significantly boost TikTok's monetization. The same logic likely applies to Gist.

Quick Take: Interesting to see a company that recently got out of the owned and operated business by selling its gaming studio, get back in by launching Gist. At a certain size (AppLovin hit a $190B+ valuation yesterday after a 10%+ rally), being an independent ad tech company limits your upside. The next move is to mirror the walled gardens by owning data and inventory. That’s likely the Gist of their strategy. 

Meta is testing a new Reddit-like app called Forum - Forum pulls Facebook Groups activity into a dedicated feed, separate from the cluttered main Facebook experience. It includes two AI features: one that surfaces answers across Groups in response to user questions and another that helps admins manage their communities. The app was spotted in the App Store by Matt Navarra of the Geekout Newsletter, and when asked, a Meta spokesperson confirmed it is still in testing. This is actually Meta's second attempt at a standalone Groups app. It launched one in 2014 and shut it down three years later.

Opinion: Over the years, Meta has launched Reels (TikTok copycat), Threads (Twitter copycat), Stories (Snapchat copycat) and acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. It wants to use its network effects (distribution and monetization) to dominate any and every social medium and try to take out the OG social platforms. Next up? Reddit. Reddit has quietly built a loyal audience of anonymous users that want to engage in genuine community discussion. Forum's non-anonymous setup could be appealing to advertisers but limits its ability to compete with Reddit for users.

Thanks for reading!