June 17th-June 23rd // Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. This is the Cannes edition. We start with AppsFlyer and Walmart saying, “YES WE CANNES!”
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Top Stories 👁
Walmart buys Vibe.co to woo SMBs to streaming
Source: AdExchanger
June 23rd, 2026
Summary: Walmart is spending $1.4B to acquire Vibe.co, a French self-serve platform that makes it easy for small brands to buy streaming TV ads. Vibe will slot into Walmart Connect alongside Vizio, which Walmart acquired in 2024 for $2.3B. The combination gives Walmart a full CTV stack: Vizio brings viewership data + inventory, Vibe brings the self-serve tooling, and Walmart brings the purchase data to tie it all together.
Small advertisers have largely been priced and complexity-ed out of streaming TV. They also demand proof, since tight budgets mean every dollar needs to be justified. CTV's performance gap is also a real opportunity. Just 25% of streaming campaigns are built around lower-funnel goals, and that figure hasn't budged in years. Walmart is positioning itself to change that.
The deal comes as Walmart consolidates its global ad businesses under one roof. Walmart Connect US, Walmart Connect International, and Sam's Club MAP (which has now rebranded Sam's Club Connect) will operate under a unified global commerce media strategy led by Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire.
Opinion: Walmart ended exclusivity with The Trade Desk last year🔒, and has signed partnerships with Yahoo, Magnite, and Google in recent months to make their data available in those platforms. If Walmart is going the ad tech partnerships route to scale its ad business, then how does it make sense to also buy ad tech?
We’ll try to make sense of it.
Each of those platforms serves enterprise advertisers. Enterprise advertisers demand transparency, high service levels, and low rates. Additionally, Walmart Connect serves enterprise advertisers directly and has captured a lot of demand from them already. Buying (or building) enterprise ad tech to grow this business the last extra little bit wouldn’t be worth it. The juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.
However, mid-sized and small advertisers represent pure upside for Walmart. It doesn’t work with these advertisers today. Walmart’s shopper data, combined with Vizio data, could be hugely valuable for them. And in contrast to enterprise advertisers, scaling an ad platform for small advertisers can yield high margins, as there isn’t a lot of pricing pressure and service isn’t needed (since the platform is self-serve). Revenue is diversified. It’s a great business! Just ask Google and Meta. That said, it’s hard to scale this kind of business. Which is why Walmart acquired Vibe!
Add in that Walmart is doubling down on the high-growth CTV sector, and the deal starts to make a lot of sense.
AppsFlyer raises $1B from Moloco, Google, Meta, and Unity
Source: Axios
June 22nd, 2026
Summary: AppsFlyer just raised $1B+ in a Series E at a $2.7B valuation. AppsFlyer is a mobile measurement platform that helps brands track whether their ads actually worked across mobile, web, and CTV.
The investor list is the real story. Google, Meta, Moloco, and Unity each acquired a minority stake in AppsFlyer, so you have four of the largest mobile ad platforms collectively betting on independent measurement.
The terms are non-exclusive, with none of the investors receiving preferential treatment. AppsFlyer stays independent. CEO Oren Kaniel says as AI takes over ad buying, the measurement signals feeding those systems are becoming the most consequential infrastructure in the industry.
Founded in 2011, AppsFlyer previously raised $300M total. Its next stop is an IPO.
Opinion: The companies funding AppsFlyer are the same companies AppsFlyer exists to hold accountable. That's a savvy insurance policy. Google and Meta are persistently under antitrust scrutiny, and keeping AppsFlyer alive is great cover. "We're not monopolists who grade our own homework! Look, we literally funded independent measurement." Could make their grades look better, too.
The funding round will likely keep the measurement platform out of the hands of a strategic competitor or a PE firm.
Other Notable Headlines 👀
Omnicom goes on a CTV tear at Cannes Lions🔒 - Omnicom Media arrived at Cannes Lions with CTV announcements powered by the Acxiom identity infrastructure it picked up through its IPG acquisition. A new partnership with Netflix pairs Acxiom audience data with Netflix's ad suite to serve more personalized, contextually relevant ads. A separate collaboration🔒 with Disney Advertising, powered by Innovid, enables sequential storytelling in video on demand and live sports, enabling a progression of creative that builds on itself. Andx a cross-platform frequency measurement capability, now live across Disney, NBCU, Paramount, and others, lets agencies track ad exposure across streaming publishers in a single clean room and tie it back to business outcomes. Omnicom also unveiled Acxiom FanGraph, connecting sports fan data to individual consumer identities across 2.6B global profiles.
Amazon pushes conversational AI ads onto the open internet🔒 - Amazon is bringing its conversational display ads to publishers across the open web. The units let shoppers tap a prompt inside a display ad to start a product-focused conversation with Alexa, and Amazon retains that interaction info for future visits. The format has existed on Amazon's own properties since 2024. Off-site placements are sold on a CPM basis rather than cost-per-click, putting them squarely in upper-funnel territory.
WPP agencies have stopped using LiveRamp - WPP CEO Cindy Rose confirmed at Cannes Lions that the agency holding company recently walked away from LiveRamp, the data onboarding and identity platform that Publicis is in the process of buying. When asked whether Publicis' pending acquisition of LiveRamp was behind WPP's decision, Rose answered with a question of her own: "What do you think?" Publicis is building a future around controlling data infrastructure, while WPP is wagering that brands will want to keep their data close as AI makes it more valuable. Rose also said the traditional time-and-materials billing model is finished, and that WPP is experimenting with tying its own compensation directly to client business results.
Palantir and Zeta Global ink 7-year deal, targeting $100M in annual revenue🔒 - The partnership connects Zeta's Data Cloud with Palantir's Foundry platform, which Zeta says will let it process client data with less lag than its current setup allows. Zeta CEO David Steinberg plans to work the arrangement into client proposals going forward, with the go-to-market focus on Palantir's commercial enterprise customer base. It's a bit of an odd pairing: Palantir is controversial for its involvement in government surveillance and immigration enforcement, which sits uneasily alongside a marketing business that aims to foster consumer data trust.
The Trade Desk forms a travel and hospitality media network - The Trade Desk is bringing together partners like Uber Advertising, Booking.com, United's Kinective Media, and Marriott's Riott Media into a coordinated go-to-market effort. The idea is to make travel audience data inventory more accessible to advertisers who don't typically think of airlines, hotels, or booking sites as media channels.
Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓
Samba TV buys Bestever AI: 'The future of advertising is not just automated, it is autonomous' - The deal brings agentic ad creative tools to Samba's CTV data ecosystem.
What remains of Vox Media is getting bought by Penske Media Corp. - After James Murdoch's Lupa Systems bought New York Magazine and Vox from Vox Media last month, PMC is taking the rest, adding The Verge, Eater, and SB Nation to its portfolio that already includes Variety, Rolling Stone, and Deadline.
Reddit expands 'community intelligence' ad strategy - Reddit launched several new ad products at Cannes Lions, including Shopping List Ads, a free-form ad generator, and Redditor Highlights, all built on turning user research behavior into ad opportunities.
AppLovin Ads is now open to all advertisers - After eight months in referral-only mode, AppLovin's self-serve ad platform is now open to any advertiser, offering access to more than 1B daily active users across mobile gaming inventory.
Instacart wants to co-create ads with brands🔒 - Instacart launched Ads Studio at Cannes Lions, letting brands appear in or co-produce campaigns through its in-house agency. A TikTok-style video feed is also coming.
Kroger Precision Marketing launches self-service advertising with TikTok - Brands can use Kroger's shopper data to target audiences directly within TikTok's ad platform, closing the loop between social discovery and purchase.
Uber Advertising launches Uber Marketing Manager, a unified self-serve ad platform - Uber is consolidating its advertising products across Uber and Uber Eats into a single platform, adding new ad formats like Destination Offers, and expanding its Creative Studio to new global markets.
GAM launches a chatbot for troubleshooting ad campaigns - Google Ad Manager is beta testing Ask Ad Manager, an AI chatbot built on Gemini that helps publisher ad ops teams diagnose underperforming campaigns, analyze bidder performance, and navigate the GAM interface.
Disney plans to open ESPN Fan House to help advertisers reach sports fans in new ways - Disney's new interactive hub debuts this August with college football, giving brands a new way to reach fans across live events, social, and digital through interactive touchpoints like polls and trivia.
It’s all about live sports, folks!
That’s It For This Week 👋
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