Over three decades of expansion, Amazon has displaced countless smaller businesses in the sectors it targeted, from bookshops to main street retailers. 

In its latest retail initiative, however, the tech titan wants to be a big brother to smaller businesses that want their cut of the retail media gold rush – lowering the barrier to entry for companies previously priced out of $54.85 billion spent on retail media last year, according to eMarketer stats.

Through the Amazon Retail Ad Service the company is offering to provide (at a cost) its retail media ad tech stack to retail brands that lack the scale or resources to build out their own systems. 

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With TikTok’s fate in the U.S. dangling between the Supreme Court and President-elect Donald Trump, competitors are moving in to try and claim its ad dollars.

Snapchat, for example, isn’t holding back. In recent pitches to marketers, the app’s ad sales team has highlighted the notable audience overlap between Snapchat and TikTok in the U.S., both on a daily and monthly basis, according to two slides shared with Digiday.

The first slide shows Snapchat’s claim that 60% of U.S. users over the age of 18 also use TikTok daily, while the second slide highlights that 77% of Snapchat’s U.S. users aged 18 or over use TikTok monthly. Both slides strongly indicate that anyone seeking a possible replacement could at least find a majority of their TikTok users over on Snapchat.

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As Discord’s budding romance with brands and advertisers continues, the platform has hired its first-ever chief business officer to scale up its sales and partnership business.

Jules Shumaker, Discord’s new CBO, comes to the company with over two decades of gaming advertising experience. Most recently, she served as CRO of Unity between 2021 and 2024; prior to Unity, she worked as a vp of advertising for the game publisher Zynga. Her first day as Discord’s CBO was Jan. 6.

Shumaker’s entrance comes at an opportune time for Discord. Having established itself as the gaming community’s dominant text and voice chat platform, the company hired a team of experienced platform and gaming executives to launch its first ad product, Play Quests, in March 2024. In October of last year, Discord launched its second ad product, Video Quests. Both are rewarded ad formats — ads that give users an in-app reward in exchange for their engagement and attention — that prompt Discord users to play a certain game or engage in other activities to receive on-platform digital prizes such as profile-picture overlays.

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The impending U.S. TikTok ban could threaten some creators’ ability to grow their audiences across all platforms — not just the embattled Chinese-owned short-form video app.

As the United States marches toward a TikTok ban on Jan. 19, livestreaming creators in particular are lamenting the potential death of the platform’s so-called “clipping culture,” which they believe had an uplifting effect on their followings on both TikTok and other platforms.

“TikTok is pretty commonly used now for Twitch growth,” said Gappy, a Twitch streamer who asked to keep his real name private. “When we think of the new age of Twitch streamers — Kai Cenat, CaseOh, Jynxzi — they all got their virality through TikTok.”

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Telcos and ad tech: the media world’s messiest on-again, off-again relationship. T-Mobile’s $600 million cash swoop for outdoor ad specialist Vistart is the latest reunion in this turbulent love story.

Slated to close this spring pending approval, its ad tech’s first notable deal of the year arrives as outdoor advertising cements itself as the sector’s rising star.

What truly stands out, though, is the deja vu. The bit where hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, exchange hands only to come crashing down years later? Haven’t we seen this movie before?

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Chad Schulte, senior vice president of agency partnerships and strategy, Seedtag

In this time of unprecedented access to information, it’s crucial objective journalism remains a cornerstone of an informed and functional society. However, as modern news organizations grapple with increasing financial pressures, a troubling trend has emerged: advertisers’ over-reliance on blunt-object keyword-blocking measures.

These practices are designed to shield brands from content deemed controversial or unsafe but unintentionally undermine the viability of a healthy and functioning news media. At the heart of this issue is a misunderstanding of how the public views advertising in the context of news. Rather than associating brands with negativity, readers often trust brands more when their advertisements appear alongside professional journalism.

Broad ad-blocking strategies discourage coverage of complex topics

The financial strain on news organizations is a longstanding public affair, some of which is self-inflicted. With digital advertising now the dominant revenue stream for news outlets, applying certain brand-safety practices has led to the widespread demonetization of critical news topics. Words like conflict, crisis, protest and even election often trigger automated ad-blocking algorithms, depriving articles on these topics of revenue opportunities.

The implications are profound: Newsrooms face financial disincentives to report on complex issues that require public attention.

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We want to hear your thoughts on the potential TikTok ban. Take our brief survey.

For years, TikTok creators have been trying to migrate their audiences onto other platforms — but were relatively subtle about their efforts, both due to fears that TikTok’s algorithm suppresses attempts to move users off the app and because of TikTok users’ distaste toward manipulative content.

But now, as the U.S. forges ahead with its TikTok ban that’s approaching a Jan. 19 deadline, creators have gone mask-off, growing more proactive and more explicit with their attempts to divert fans off of TikTok as a ban or sale becomes a likely reality. Even though moving followers over onto another social network isn’t easy, it shouldn’t immediately disrupt many brand deals.

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Digiday’s events are getting a refresh under the leadership of Liz Pitonyak, who joined the company as general manager of events in December.

She joined Digiday Media with 15 years of experience in event strategy and partnership, after most recently directing event initiatives at Adweek and at Forbes. She will oversee events for Digiday, Glossy, Modern Retail and WorkLife.

“I have dedicated my career to creating transformative experiences that resonate with target audiences, amplify brand stories and deliver measurable business outcomes,” Pitonyak said.

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This story originally published on sister site, WorkLife.

WPP’s announcement requiring employees to return to the office four days a week has sent shockwaves through the advertising industry, spotlighting a deepening divide between corporate-owned and independent agencies on workplace flexibility. While some leaders argue in-person collaboration fuels creativity, critics view the move as outdated and morale-crushing.

Employees have voiced frustration over the abrupt policy from the agency holding group, citing poor communication and personal challenges, with some questioning whether “creative collaboration” outweighs childcare needs or two-hour commutes. Meanwhile, independents see an opportunity to attract disillusioned talent championing flexible models that balance productivity with personal well-being.

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Entire direct-to-consumer empires have been built on the back of paid social and search advertising. But empires have to think about the long term to last.

With platforms such as Facebook and Instagram becoming more expensive and quite possibly less brand safe, Comcast hopes to tempt away DTC advertisers from those performance-focused channels and lead them toward TV and CTV inventory. Its execs hope a new ad sales platform, Universal Ads, could help convert performance marketers into long-term brand builders.

It’s a move many DTC and SME brands would welcome, according to eight media buyers working with DTC clients that spoke with Digiday. That said, it doesn’t mean a shift in DTC spend to TV is a fait accompli.

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This week’s Media Briefing features an interview with Dotdash Meredith’s chief innovation officer, Jon Roberts. We discuss what the company has learned nearly nine months into its deal with OpenAI and what he wants to develop with AI technology at the company this year.

• Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025
• Media companies prepare for legal battles with Trump administration, Fortune retracts bogus story and more

Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025

Dotdash Meredith has ambitious plans for the development of its AI-powered technology in 2025. 

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In advertising circles, a quiet theory has been gaining traction: The Trade Desk, it’s said, isn’t exactly enamored with curation — a targeting strategy that could redirect valuable ad spend elsewhere. This week’s acquisition of Sincera added fuel to the narrative. But The Trade Desk has dismissed the rumors outright.

As vp of inventory development Will Doherty put it plainly: “We don’t think a lot about curation.”

Instead, the deal, according to Doherty, is aimed at something far more ambitious. 

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Brian Tomasette, director of product, Amazon DSP

The amount of change and number of challenges that marketers faced in 2024 was head-spinning. From uncertainty about third-party identifiers to the chaos of ever-changing privacy rules, brands, agencies and technology partners like Amazon have had to rethink, adapt and innovate to reach audiences wherever they are — and now, they are everywhere. Not only has the consumer path-to-purchase expanded — most people use at least 20 touchpoints before making a decision — but their attention spans have shrunk. It’s a double whammy that has led marketers to find new ways to connect with their audience and increase relevancy across the marketing funnel.


Between the fast pace of business, constant technological advances and ongoing privacy changes, it’s becoming more difficult to understand the impact of advertising dollars across channels and devices. 

To solve this challenge, marketers who leverage unique customer signals to reach their most relevant audiences at scale can significantly impact campaign outcomes. However, deploying a full-funnel strategy incorporating both has been a challenge.

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Charlie Swift, general manager, Adstra Services

The term performance marketing is hardly new, however, in the 2020s, the tactics and tools marketers use to achieve performance have evolved considerably, necessitating an update to how the industry understands the practice. 

This practice is about getting the most out of marketing spend by doing more with each dollar, rather than restricting how much is spent — performance marketing needs some nuance.

Analyzing the seven stages of development reveals where many people practicing performance marketing typically stop and how they can move far beyond and become marketing masters.

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Mark Zohar, CEO, Viafoura

For the digital media industry, 2024 was a year characterized by ongoing disruption and challenges, balanced by emerging opportunities for resilience and growth.

For many digital publishers and media brands, much of last year was spent modernizing core infrastructure and systems (e.g., CMS upgrades, dynamic paywalls, authorization systems), improving site performance (e.g., core web vitals and SEO) and optimizing subscription strategies. 

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The Trade Desk intends to acquire ad data firm Sincera, marking only its second acquisition since it launched in 2009 — a rare move for a company that usually builds, not buys. 

Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but when the deal closes, expected in the first quarter, Sincera’s co-founder and CEO, Mike O’Sullivan, will report directly to The Trade Desk’s CEO, Jeff Green.

Why The Trade Desk acquisition breaks its ‘build over buy’ habit 

The move arms the ad tech vendor with more data to convince publishers that ads running through its platform outperform the rest of the programmatic market. In fact, Sincera’s data powered The Trade Desk’s recent “Sellers and Publishers,” spotlighting where advertising value is migrating across the premium, open internet. 

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This week’s Future of TV Briefing reports on the meetings that Netflix held with ad buyers during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, during which it discussed its advertising road map for the year.

• Nextflix
• Venu’s shutdown, creators’ AI deals, TikTok’s ban likelihood and more

Nextflix

If Netflix’s Christmas Day games were a touchdown — and they were in ad buyers’ minds — then the company is now going for a two-point conversion.

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As of today, Jan. 15, Walmart has doubled down on its push into the metaverse by launching Zepeto’s first-ever e-commerce experience for physical goods.

Zepeto is a digital avatar creation platform that allows its user base — which skews female and is roughly 70 percent Gen-Z, per Walmart and Zepeto — to create and share virtual experiences using digital representations of themselves. Now, Zepeto app users viewing virtual Walmart clothing items can use the app to log into their Walmart accounts and order physical versions of those items to be shipped directly to their doorsteps. Additionally, purchases of select physical garments in brick-and-mortar Walmart stores will also come with free downloads of their virtual equivalents on Zepeto.

The launch is Walmart’s third metaverse e-commerce experience, evidence that the retailer is playing the long game in its approach to virtual worlds. In April 2024, Walmart partnered with Roblox to open that platform’s first e-commerce experience for physical goods; in May 2024, Walmart opened its own virtual world platform featuring e-commerce opportunities, Walmart Realm.

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This story was originally published by sister site, Modern Retail.

Last July, the period care brand Viv saw its monthly traffic spike by 400%, which “came out of nowhere,” according to Viv’s marketing and design director Kelly Donohue.

After some digging, Donohue discovered that the jump in traffic was driven primarily by Google Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT search recommendations for non-toxic period care. At the time, a study by the scientific journal Environment International came out that found that many popular tampon brands contain heavy metals like lead and arsenic. Many people were asking the AI assistants about toxins in tampons and searching for sustainable period products, which led them to Viv’s blog.

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This week’s court hearing in The New York Times’ case against OpenAI gave another glimpse of both sides’ legal strategies for the high-profile lawsuit over AI copyright.

On Tuesday, a federal judge heard oral arguments from both parties in a motion to dismiss brought by OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft. The New York Times — as well as The New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting, which have filed their own lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft — claim OpenAI and Microsoft used the publishers’ content to train their large language models powering their generative AI chatbots. Doing so means the tech companies are competing with those publishers by using their content to answers users’ questions, taking away the incentive for a user to visit their sites for that information and ultimately hurting their ability to monetize those users through digital advertising and subscriptions, they claim.

OpenAI and Microsoft say what they’re doing is covered by “fair use,” a law that allows the use of copyrighted material to make something new that doesn’t compete with the original work.

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