August 20th-August 26th // Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Macy’s made a deal with the devil…

Advertisers Will Soon Be Able to Buy Macy's Media Network Through Amazon🔒 
Source: Adweek
August 21st, 2025

Summary: Macy's just became the first major retailer to partner with Amazon's Retail Ad Service, allowing Amazon to power sponsored product ads on Macy's website. This partnership is significant because retailers typically view Amazon as their biggest competitor, but Macy's is prioritizing advertiser convenience over competitive concerns.

The integration lets brands purchase sponsored product ads on Macy's website through familiar platforms like Amazon Ads and retail specialists like Pacvue, eliminating the need to work directly with Macy's sales team or use another proprietary retail tech stack. Macy's VP of retail media Michael Krans positioned this as "complementary" to their existing Criteo partnership—essentially keeping all options open to maximize demand.

Amazon launched its Retail Ad Service in January with smaller beta partners (Oriental Trading, iHerb, and Weee!), but landing Macy's validates the model and could accelerate adoption. The partnership uses AWS clean rooms for measurement to protect customer data—Macy's won't share personally identifiable information with Amazon.

This intensifies competition in retail media ad tech, where incumbents like Criteo already face pressure from newer players like Koddi, Mirakl, and Topsort. Now Amazon enters as the 800-pound gorilla.

Opinion: Macy's is hurting as a company (because of Amazon) and desperately needs revenue, so they're making a deal with ... Amazon. Rather than building advertiser relationships and partnering with neutral tech providers, they're hitting the easy button—turning on Amazon's spigot of ad demand. It's the classic, short-term revenue bump move over the strategic, long-term approach. Not great, but we get it—they're in a tough spot.

Meanwhile, Amazon is playing 3D chess. They've moved well beyond building their own retail media network—they're becoming the utility company for the entire retail industry. 

If this model scales, Amazon goes from competitor to kingmaker. They will collect tolls on every retail advertising dollar while gaining visibility into their competitors’ performance, pricing strategies, and customer behavior. It reminds us a bit of the Google AdSense playbook: become the biggest publisher, become the best publisher at ad monetization, then rent out your publisher ad monetization machine to all your publisher competitors. Except Amazon is doing it for retail. 

For marketers, consolidated buying across retail networks sounds wonderful! But be careful what you wish for: If Amazon becomes the monopolistic infrastructure layer for all retail media, what happens to pricing and innovation?

This is a big blow for the pure-play retail media companies like Criteo, Kevel, and Koddi. They don’t have as much demand as Amazon, so it’ll be hard to compete. The only thing they’ll have is neutrality (and maybe superior tech, for now). But that didn’t matter enough to Macy’s. Soon it may not matter enough to other retailers either.

Macy's made a deal with the devil. Maybe they had no choice. Other retailers may keep at it by continuing to build their retail media businesses independent of Amazon. But many retailers are in the same boat as Macy’s; Margins are thin, the economy is rocky, and Amazon continues to suck away market share. They need the short-term revenue bump to stay afloat. But they’ll only get it from their biggest competitor: Amazon. Retailers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either way, Amazon wins.

Whistleblower Alleges Meta Artificially Boosted Shops Ads Performance🔒- A former Meta product manager claims the company inflated return on ad spend (ROAS) metrics by including shipping fees and taxes in revenue calculations—money that never actually reaches merchants. While Meta's other ad products exclude these figures, matching industry practice, Shops ads appeared to outperform by 17%-19% thanks to this accounting trick. The whistleblower also alleges Meta subsidized Shops ads bids by up to 100% in auctions to boost their visibility and conversion rates. These tactics allegedly helped Meta push advertisers towards Shops ads. The whistleblower also alleged that Meta linked user data with other information to track users’ activity on websites without permission—despite Apple’s policy requiring explicit user consent.

Meta has gamed metrics before. Not cool.

Critics Say The Trade Desk Is Forcing Kokai Adoption, But Apparently It’s Up To Agencies - A Reddit user's complaint about being blocked from using The Trade Desk's legacy Solimar interface sparked concerns about a forced platform transition. But the restriction may have stemmed from the buyer's agency deciding to go Kokai-only for campaigns, not from The Trade Desk itself. It's ultimately a buyer decision, according to The Trade Desk, which says 70% of platform spend is already flowing through the newer interface. But there are strong pockets of resistance among buyers who find Kokai cumbersome, creating headaches for The Trade Desk as it aims for complete migration by year's end.

Here’s Who’s Testifying During The Remedy Phase Of Google’s Ad Tech Antitrust Trial - The US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Google have filed their witness lists for the September remedies phase, when Judge Leonie Brinkema will decide the punishment after finding Google guilty of monopolizing the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets in April. The DOJ has asked for a range of consequences for Google, including forcing Google to divest ad tech assets like Google Ad Manager, to bans on self-preferencing its own ad tech products. Familiar faces from the original trial appear on witness lists for both sides, including Trade Desk's Jed Dederick, Index Exchange's Andrew Casale, and various Google executives. Some on the government's list could provide sparks, including publisher advocates like Digital Content Next's Jason Kint (who wants big, structural breakups) and AWS's Stephanie Layser (who previously testified that negotiating with Google was "impossible").The remedy phase kicks off September 22 in Virginia, with Google unable to appeal until this phase concludes.

LinkedIn deepens video ad push, taps more publishers and creators to spur growth - The professional networking platform is betting big on video with an expanded BrandLink program that now includes over 70 additional publishers and creators. LinkedIn launched the “Wire Program” last year but rebranded it to “BrandLink” in May and expanded it to include creators. Publishers and creators can post short-form videos as part of campaigns that run from four to six months long. AT&T Business, IBM, SAP, and ServiceNow are sponsoring four new video series as part of the program. LinkedIn's attempt to capture the creator economy wave seems to be working, with BrandLink revenue jumping nearly 200% quarter over quarter through June, and creator and publisher payouts tripling year over year. 

Yahoo Sports Joins the FAST Channel Rush🔒- Apollo-owned Yahoo is betting on the intersection of two hot media trends—free, ad-supported streaming TV (aka FAST) and sports content—with a channel that sidesteps expensive live sports rights in favor of analysis and fantasy programming built around big sports tentpoles. Yahoo's approach reflects the broader fragmentation of sports media, where everyone from sportsbooks like DraftKings to legacy players like ESPN are building competing content ecosystems for the same audiences. Yahoo's FAST channel debuts on LG and Sling before expanding to major platforms like Roku and Prime Video, targeting advertisers hungry for premium sports inventory as traditional slots become scarcer and more expensive. While Yahoo's 10x year-over-year growth in sports video watch time on YouTube suggests audience appetite, the company faces stiff competition from deep-pocketed rivals who can produce content at scale and independent creators with loyal followings.

As AI Search Threatens Open-Web Ad Supply, DSPs Face a Reckoning🔒- Major publishers like CNN, Business Insider, and HuffPost are seeing traffic drops of 30%-40% as AI tools keep users from clicking through to websites, creating a supply crunch for demand-side platforms (DSPs). The Trade Desk and Viant are scrambling to adapt, with Viant reporting 45% of its ad spend is now in connected TV rather than traditional display inventory. The shift is forcing a fundamental recalibration across programmatic buying, where established audience targeting and lead prediction models are breaking down as search behavior becomes less predictable. Some speculate that this could create a bidding war for the remaining premium inventory, driving CPMs higher while pushing more advertising dollars toward walled gardens like Meta and Google's owned properties.

Walmart’s booming ad business provides ‘flexibility’ amid tariff impact - Revenue was up 4.8% to $177.4B, beating estimates, but earnings per share missed expectations. Global ad revenue was up 46%, including Vizio; Walmart Connect in the US was up 31%. Shares fell 4%. 

Magnite Is Making Pause Ads Available To Buy Programmatically - The pause ads, which will appear on Fubo, DirecTV, and other streaming services, can be purchased through ClearLine, Magnite's direct-to-buyer option, and other DSPs like Yahoo DSP. 

Leaked Doc Shows How Much Walmart, Best Buy, and DoorDash Charge For Retail Media Ads on The Trade Desk🔒- Adweek breaks down how The Trade Desk is selling retailers’ data and how retailers are charging varying prices for their audiences. Very illuminating…

AppLovin Appears to Be Installing Apps That People Don't Want Via Some Questionable Ad Practices - Mike Shields talks to an ad fraud expert who says he has observed mobile game apps taking over his screen, which may cause users to inadvertently authorize game installations. 

TikTok's new AI mandate is getting backlash from big advertisers🔒- Beginning Sept. 1, the platform will require TikTok Shop brands to use a new AI ad tool that lets an algorithm automate TikTok Shop ad campaigns. 

Snap Investor Sues After Advertising Tool Glitch Hurts Sales🔒- Investors say the platform hid a technical issue that led to its stock sinking 17%. 

Perplexity to Let Publishers Share in Revenue from AI Searches🔒- Perplexity would pay publishers when their content is used in search queries, generates web traffic through Perplexity’s AI-powered Comet internet browser, or if it helps Comet’s AI assistant finish any tasks.

Nielsen: Legacy Nets, Their Streamers, Lose More Ground - YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, and Roku are killing it, with YouTube now accounting for a 13.4%  share of total TV usage viewing minutes in July. 

Former Netflix Ad Chief Jeremi Gorman Joins Fanatics as Head of Sports Merch and Media Company’s New Advertising Division - Gorman will also serve as CFO for Fanatics, which aims to help brands show up across the modern fandom journey, including content and commerce. 

Nielsen Strikes 'Marketing Cloud' Deal With WPP Media's InfoSum - InfoSum will be able to use the Nielsen Marketing Cloud to tap into Nielsen’s proprietary data sets. The news follows a data licensing deal between Nielsen and WPP Media. 

Meta partners with Midjourney on AI image and video models - The deal may help Meta better compete with AI image and video models like OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo.

AI Marketing Platform Bluefish Raises $20M In Series A Funding - Bluefish specializes in generative engine optimization (aka GEO), which enables advertisers to more favorably show up in AI search queries. This category is hot!

AppLovin Becomes Axon, Will Expand Internationally - AppLovin is relaunching its platform for all advertisers on October 1st, rebranded as Axon. More deets here:

Oh and your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married 🧨

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