Digiday

Behemoths like Amazon and Walmart dominate the retail media network landscape. However, that hasn’t stopped smaller players from coming into the space en masse and competing with one another, trying to stand out in a competitive landscape enough to scoop up any spare ad dollars. Similar to a peacock mating dance, smaller, regional and specialized retail media networks like Macy’s, Lowe’s and Home Depot have spent the last few months rebranding and retooling their offerings, hoping to catch the attention and budgets of media buyers in a sea of competitors. With finite budgets, media agency execs say it becomes a matter of the haves vs. the have nots — which retailers have enough scale, data and measurement to beat out the competition.

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Sports is one of the few categories consistently driving new subscribers and, perhaps more importantly, retaining them. The live aspect of sports also preserves the value of ad slots during broadcasts, providing an emerging and reliable revenue stream for platforms. Sponsored by Nexxen.

It has been a little over a year since MediaMath’s Chapter 11 filing, proceedings that surely rank as one of the biggest financial shocks to the system in the, albeit short, history of ad tech. The demand-side platform’s demise was significant on several fronts, with some considering it a line in the sand that demarcated critical changes in the sector that occurred in recent years.

This year, Verizon received a record 49,000 applications for its summer #internship program. It’s a signal from interested undergraduate students who are hoping to position themselves as candidates for hire at the end of the 10-week program. At the same time, companies aren’t just looking to rising seniors and juniors anymore for internship opportunities, but instead recruiting folks as young as rising sophomores. That’s a part of a talent shortage impacting companies across the country. In this piece by Cloey Callahan, we speak to Steve West, and Kevin Cammarata.

Each of the four channels Digiday+ Research examined in our #CMO Strategies series draws on a different set of marketing tactics and is influenced by distinct consumer and advertiser trends. Among the four channels, social media had the highest overall channel usage for paid ads, at a 97% usage rate among survey respondents. Display ads came in second place, with 75% of respondents saying that they use the channel for paid ads, an increase of 14 percentage points over last year. However, while the top two channels have taken up a large amount of marketers’ attention this year, #retailmedia also saw an increase in adoption, from 40% in 2023 to 53% in 2024. Story by Li Lu

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Even billionaire-backed media companies are not immune to the challenges facing the media and digital advertising industries. Last week, 22 staffers were laid off from TIME — which is owned by Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and his wife and philanthropist Lynne Benioff — as part of a larger reduction of operational costs amid ad revenue declines. Cuts were made to the editorial, sales, marketing, technology and TIME Studios teams, according to a memo from CEO Jessica Sibley sent to #Time staffers last week that was shared with Digiday. And more cost cutting measures are coming down the pike, including limiting contractors and downsizing its New York headquarters. At the center of these changes is focusing the company’s editorial and business strategy on its “most commercially successful work” and the “biggest opportunities for growth” at Time, which is its coverage of leadership – particularly in the categories of AI, climate and health — Sibley wrote. That, in part, has played a big role in the transition to the sales team’s B2B revenue strategy. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast (which was recorded on July 22, prior to the layoff announcement), Sibley discusses why she views Time’s B2B revenue strategy as the best path forward for growth, as well as other areas of revenue opportunity, including partnerships with AI technology companies like OpenAI and Perplexity.

Criteo has announced the launch of a “succession plan” for a new chief executive after existing CEO Megan Clarken informed the ad tech outfit’s board of directors that she plans to retire within the next 12 months. This development comes at a critical time for the company as it seeks to complete its transition from its earliest days as an ad retargeting outfit to a “commerce media” player, a move necessitated by growing privacy requirements. Story by Ronan Shields

The 2024 #election cycle was always going to be disruptive for advertisers during the fourth quarter – that’s the norm for advertisers every election year. The tumult of the presidential election this summer, with the #Democrats changing nominees as well as the assassination attempt on former President Trump, however, isn’t the norm. Advertisers have come to expect the unexpected this election cycle and ad buyers are keeping an even closer eye on how the election cycle is shaking out, how contentious the presidential candidates’ #advertising will be and how the dominant channels for political advertising may be changing. In this piece by Kristina Monllos, we speak to Jennifer Kohl of VML, and Bana Amare of Media by Mother.