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The Best Of Cannes 2024: Key Moments And Trends For The Year Ahead - There was a flood of announcements from last week's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and also a flood of photos on our social media feed of people drinking rosé on yachts on the French Riviera.
Commerce media networks made a big splash at the event, in line with the surging popularity of the channel, while sustainability and sports were also top of mind. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media announced its Global Media Sustainability Framework at Cannes, for example, and Sport Beach by Stagwell provided some major star power with appearances by Shaun White, Travis and Jason Kelce, Mikaela Shiffrin, and Megan Rapinoe. Ad tech had a major presence too, with many conversations focused on the impending death of third-party cookies. AI, of course, was a big theme, with Amazon and Google talking a big game on how AI could help offset signal loss from cookie deprecation. Some of the biggest announcements coming out of Cannes included Omnicom and The Trade Desk's partnership; Omnicom's partnership with Amazon Ads on data; Havas' $400M bet on AI; and Disney's partnership with retail data provider Affinity Solutions on purchase data.
Ad tech Firm Sonobi Pursues a Sale as SSP M&A Surges 🔒- Supply-side platform Sonobi has been on the market since last September. Sonobi, which also sells directly to brands and agencies, has $35M in revenue and has already fielded a few bids. The company is backed by private equity firm Cohere Capital and is exploring a sale through investment bank BrightTower. The news follows word that SSP 33Across is also looking to sell 🔒. Mobile SSP Verve acquired sell-side ad tech company Jun Group a couple of weeks ago to diversify its channel mix. Seedtag and Equativ also recently acquired SSPs Beachfront and Sharethrough, respectively.
Opinion: SSP consolidation is a clear sign that traditional SSPs have become an industry commodity.
Disney’s Aggressive Bid for Streaming Ads Leaves Video Rivals Scrambling - Disney has slashed CPMs for Disney+ by as much as 15% in some upfront deals in exchange for investment across its portfolio. NBC has dropped some of its rates to compete with Disney, but Warner Bros. Discovery is resisting. Amazon and Netflix have both tried to aggressively set their own CPMs but aren't finding as much traction outside of Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football." Netflix, in particular, is facing low demand. Many say overall upfront volume will probably be down this year, while supply will be up due to Amazon Prime's entrance to the ad-supported streaming landscape. As Disney angles for more streaming dollars, it is also continuing to beef up its ad products, including offering its audience graph and clean room to the Latin American market ahead of launching a Disney+ ad tier in that market.
Opinion: Disney continues to be one of the most visionary, aggressive, tech-forward publishers out there. Take note publishers!
Target taps Shopify to add sellers to its third-party marketplace - Shopify sellers can now apply to join Target Plus, the retailer's third-party marketplace. Many Shopify customers are smaller, emerging brands that leverage the e-commerce platform to build and run their websites. Target Plus has more than 1,200 brands that sell their products through Target’s online marketplace, and many of them advertise through Roundel, Target's advertising unit. Roundel's revenue grew more than 20% last quarter. Target Plus is "one of the fastest growing parts of Target’s business," according to one executive, as it generates higher margins since the sellers own, store, and ship their merchandise and deal with any returns. For comparison's sake, Target Plus is still much smaller than competitors: Walmart’s marketplace has roughly 135K sellers, and Amazon’s has 2M. Meanwhile, Target is now on the hunt for a new CMO after current marketing chief Lisa Roath moves to the role of chief merchandising officer after less than a year on the job.
Opinion: Shopify looms as a potential sleeping giant in the ad space, given its access to transaction data and merchants willing to spend on advertising. We expect them to make more noise in advertising in the coming months and years.
Oracle tried to sell ad business to DoubleVerify and IAS before shutting it down 🔒- The tech giant was discussing a sale with verification vendors DoubleVerify and IAS right up until when CEO Safra Catz suddenly closed it down. At issue were broader master service agreements that included Oracle's various advertising services, which were difficult to unbundle so that the business could be sold on its own. Over more than a decade, Oracle shelled out billions of dollars to build out its advertising unit, including $400M on data management platform BlueKai, $1.2B on data broker Datalogix, $850M on measurement company Moat, $400M on brand safety company Grapeshot, and $200M on social data company AddThis. Oracle's ad services will all close down on September 30th. No surprise, DoubleVerify, IAS, Human Security, and Comscore are already touting their ability to step in for Oracle customers and maybe even hire some impacted Oracle employees.
Ad Industry Blasts Possible Nationwide Ban On Behavioral Advertising - The American Privacy Rights Act took a sharp turn last week when the latest version included an outright ban on behavioral advertising, rather than the previous version that would let consumers opt out of seeing behaviorally targeted ads. Privacy for America, an organization that includes the major advertising trade groups 4A's, ANA, IAB, and others, came out swinging against the change. It says the national privacy framework would hurt regular engagement between companies and their customers, while making it harder for people to learn about the products, services, information, and resources they use every day. The discussion draft is headed for markup in the House Energy and Commerce committee this week.
Apple is first company charged with violating EU’s DMA rules - The European Commission claims that Apple's App Store does not fully enable app developers to "steer" customers to free or cheaper offers outside the App Store. Apple is one of six designated "gatekeepers" under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) that must ensure they don't give their own products and services an unfair advantage. Apple can resolve the EU's concerns before a March 2025 final ruling; if not, the EU could fine Apple 10% of its annual global revenue, which would be $38B based on last year’s numbers. Gulp. The EU has also opened a new investigation into whether Apple's policies are undermining alternative iOS app stores. In a separate action, the European Commission also charged Microsoft with violating the DMA by illegally bundling the Teams chat app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. The company has already taken steps to remove Teams from Office in Europe and spun it off into its own separate app but it hasn’t been enough to satisfy regulators.
The Trade Desk Makes Good On Threats To Block Yahoo’s Video Ads - The Trade Desk has blocked access to Yahoo's video inventory for open-auction bidding due to the companies' ongoing disagreement over how Yahoo labels some units. Last week, The Trade Desk warned that it would demonetize Yahoo's video inventory 🔒if the publisher didn't stop mislabeling some video ad inventory as in-stream, which commands a higher CPMs, rather than as "accompanying content," which falls under the "outstream" classification per the latest IAB standards. Yahoo says it is collaborating with The Trade Desk to resolve the matter, but it's unclear when that will happen. Yahoo has criticized The Trade Desk's interpretation of the IAB standards and suggested that the dispute is a publicity stunt since the video inventory in question represents a tiny amount of revenue for both companies.
Opinion: At this point, this story is just making both companies look bad!
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