AdExchanger News for April 5, 2019

Today's Must Read - Big Brands Take On The Challenge Of Building Their Own DTCs [AdExchanger | Optimizing the News] Today from AdExchanger Friday, April 5 Join Us [AdExchanger Awards Gala Registration Open]( - The finalists have been announced. Please join us in celebrating their achievements on April 29 in San Francisco. --------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Must Read [Big Brands Take On The Challenge Of Building Their Own DTCs]( Building a DTC brand from the ground up makes more strategic sense for big companies than it has in the past, because acquiring and investing in DTC brands is getting harder. [More.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( --------------------------------------------------------------- More from AdExchanger [After A Year Of Testing, Albertsons Is Ramping Up Its Ad Platform Business]( The idea is to turn its retail loyalty card programs into an advertising and attribution engine, since those shoppers can be tracked over time or retargeted online by advertising technology. Albertsons works with Quotient as its platform tech provider. [More.]( [The Sizmek Saga Underscores Ad Tech’s Flaws And Market Weaknesses]( Given the current climate of market decline and other less-controversial companies also looking for investors, it won’t be easy to find a buyer for Sizmek. And if it fails, Sizmek may pull down more ad-tech companies and former partners in the aftermath. [More.]( [The Big Story: Riding Eternal, Shiny And Chrome]( We ride hard and fast this week on “The Big Story,” with three tales of industry upheaval. First, we consider the prospect of a Google Chrome tracker blocker. Next, we look at Sizmek, whose travails have been thoroughly detailed by James Hercher. Finally, Oracle Data Cloud’s chief architect Eric Roza will retire from the company this summer. [More.]( [As Outcome-Based Measurement Advances, Industry And Vendors Must Align]( The time is now for buyers and sellers to work with the broad array of attribution vendors to ensure there is understanding not only in exactly what attribution is and how it is conducted, but also to gain insight into what approach is best for the KPI being assessed and for individual businesses. [More.]( [1st-Party, Self-Declared Data]( [Power your targeting with custom & syndicated segments.]( [( News Round Up Unsnapped Snap is launching an ad network that will allow it to distribute its ads on other apps and reach non-Snapchat users. The Snapchat Audience Network will allow app developers like Tinder and Houseparty to integrate an SDK that lets buyers advertising on Snap extend those buys outside of its network. Snap is launching the product alongside another tool called Stories Kit that lets users and brands post their Stories directly from Snap into other apps. Snap will split the ad revenue from its audience network buys with developers but did not state at what percentage, TechCrunch reports. It’s unclear how exactly Snap will be able to reach and track users outside its network while maintaining user privacy. But advertisers are sure to be enticed by the ability to scale their expensive Snapchat creative assets to other apps while maintaining the quality of the experience.[More](. Play Nice Amazon has recently removed ad units it previously reserved for its own private-label brands, CNBC reports. The ad positions, launched about a year ago, had exclusive and valuable placements on Amazon’s site, like just above the “fold” of the page (what’s visible before someone has to scroll) or next to the buy box for a competitor’s product. The practice infuriated brands and sellers who rely on Amazon to sell their wares, especially because Amazon uses data on other sellers’ products [to its own advantage](. Amazon is also responding to pressure from regulators and antitrust experts, who have turned up the heat on Amazon lately. “If I were Amazon, I would be worried about being viewed as giving unfair advantage to my private-label products, given the amount of power they hold in general – and how unpopular the amount of power is quickly becoming,” Andrea Leigh, VP of the Amazon agency Ideoclick. [More](. The DSP Diet In the past few weeks, dataxu let go of 30 employees, or about 10% of its staff, as it pursues a sale of the company. The layoffs affected a mix of senior and junior staffers who did not fit with the company’s TV-centric vision, says Ed Montes, who was [promoted]( to president of dataxu’s TotalTV OTT business on Thursday. “We’re doubling down on our tremendous success with TotalTV by increasing our investment in the business and organizing our leadership and operations around the solution to go further and faster,” dataxu CEO Mike Baker tells Adweek. [More](. AdExchanger [reported]( in March that Comcast is considering dataxu, which has set its valuation at $300 million, to help build up its programmatic business. Ro’ing Upstream Roku stock stumbled on Thursday as investment analysts fretted about increased competition straining the market for ad-supported streaming video. Roku shares are still way up this year, from a low of about $28 in December 2018 to $64 at market close Thursday. But as Viacom, Disney, Apple, Amazon and WarnerMedia advance their subscription streaming businesses, Roku’s active user base could have its attention divided. Amazon in particular is a threat to Roku, which has been the darling of data-driven video advertisers trying to buy their way into advanced TV. Amazon has “the highest quality data set for a programmer to leverage with advertisers,” Rosenblatt Securities analyst Mark Zgutowicz tells Bloomberg. [More](. But Wait, There’s More! - [Amazon Asks Advertisers to Pledge Millions For Roku Rival]( - Cheddar - [Here’s Who Owns Everything In Big Media Today]( - Recode - [Spotify: Launching Our Podcast Monetization Program]( - blog - [Poised To Exit Bankruptcy, iHeartMedia Files For An IPO]( - WSJ - [Verizon Media Adds Programmatic OOH Inventory]( - release - [Big Tech’s Original Sin (Hint: It’s The Greed)]( - NYT - [Amobee Signs Exclusive Programmatic Deal With British Broadcaster ITV]( - release - [Facebook’s Ad System Seems To Discriminate By Race And Gender]( - The Economist - [Integrate Buys Akkroo, Second Acquisition In Three Months]( - release - [Smartphones Will Account For More Than One-Third Of Ecom Sales In 2019]( - eMarketer You’re Hired! - [Condé Nast Names Former Pandora Boss As New CEO]( - WSJ [Offline Brand Intelligence]( [Connecting the Dots for TV Attribution]( [www.cuebiq.com/tv]( Podcasts [The Big Story Episode 35:]( Spring Forward, Fall Back [The Big Story Episode 34:]( Google’s On First [The Big Story Episode 33:]( Boiler Room [The Big Story Episode 32:]( Falling Down [The Big Story Episode 31:]( DTC Principles Come To Big Brands [The Big Story Episode 30:]( Is IAB DTC? [The Big Story Episode 29:]( Blood In The Water [The Big Story Episode 28:]( Must See TV [The Big Story Episode 27:]( A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To France [The Big Story Episode 26:]( This Episode Brought To You By The Letters CES And PMP [The Big Story Episode 25:]( The Data Deluge At CES [Check out all episodes of The Big Story >>]( [AdExchanger Talks Episode 120:]( MikMak's Rachel Tipograph [AdExchanger Talks Episode 119:]( Brian O'Kelley [AdExchanger Talks Episode 118:]( Adform's Julian Baring [AdExchanger Talks Episode 117:]( 360i's Jared Belsky [AdExchanger Talks Episode 116:]( Triad's Sherry Smith [AdExchanger Talks Episode 115:]( Heat's Jocelyn Lee [AdExchanger Talks Episode 114:]( Jivox's Diaz Nesamoney [AdExchanger Talks Episode 113:]( Nextdoor's Lauren Nemeth [AdExchanger Talks Episode 112:]( Conviva's Bill Demas [AdExchanger Talks Episode 111:]( Sovrn's Walter Knapp [AdExchanger Talks Episode 110:]( eMarketer's Lauren Fisher [Get More AdExchanger Talks Episodes >>]( Events [PROGRAMMATIC I/O + AdExchanger Awards](, San Francisco, April 29-30, 2019 [PROGRAMMATIC I/O](, New York, October 15-16, 2019 [Industry Preview 2020](, New York, January 28-29, 2020 Share This Email: [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( [Google+]( | [Forward To A Friend]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( [View in web browser]( This message was sent to {EMAIL} To ensure delivery to your inbox, [add us to your address book](. 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