Executive dysfunction behind the scenes at brand advertisers is making it harder for them to track and direct retail media investments.

The segment is one of the fastest growing areas of investment (accounting for over $140 billion of global ad spend, per eMarketer) and has provided a new stream of revenue for major retailers in the U.S., U.K. and Europe.

In Target’s latest earnings report, for example, strong performance at its retail media unit ($649 million in annual revenue, a 25% increase over 2023) offset gloomy net revenues across the rest of its business. Walmart’s retail media ad business tells a similar story, having grown 27% year over year in 2024 to net in $4.4 billion in global ad revenue.

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With so many creators making their livelihoods across social platforms, players like shopping app LTK and creators virtually have no control over how those algorithms shift and prioritize content.

More importantly, this leaves creators vulnerable if their affiliate businesses are built on social media, like TikTok and Instagram. LTK hopes to give back control to creators with a revamp of its consumer app that began in late February.

LTK (LiketoKnow.it) might be best known for finding deals and trendy influencers, but the company is now overhauling its consumer experience to focus on more entertainment and social media features, like direct messages, discovery feed and videos. The new app will look and feel more like a social app with a watch video tab based on location and interests, a home feed of updates from creators, chat tab for messaging and a discover page for finding more related content.

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On Saturday, amid cozy velvet couches and a large taxidermied cheetah behind the bar at the Austin, Texas speakeasy Powder Room, some 50 or so creators and brand marketers gathered for a mixer hosted by YouTube. There was some deliberate networking — or “forced fun” to use a term that popped up at Vox’s Sunday night event to spotlight its podcast talent — where marketers and creators were asked to make cocktails (one with milk infused with Skittles and two kinds of rum), personalize cowboy hats and, presumably, swap info. for future brand deals.

Four creators told Digiday that the advertising and entertainment industries are starting to catch up to culture — including SXSW’s embrace of the creator community this year. For the second year, SXSW has a dedicated track for the creator economy; this year there are 73 sessions for the track. SXSW kicked off on Friday and will run through March 15th.

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Pinterest has spent the last few years quietly battling for ad dollars, courting advertisers with AI-powered products, like its Performance+ tool which launched last fall, and beefing up its performance capabilities to capture a bigger portion of ad budgets. 

Based on the platform’s latest earnings, in which Pinterest reported $3.65 billion in total revenue for 2024, that quiet battle seems to have reached a fever pitch. Pinterest’s efforts seem to be paying off.

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These days, everything is getting quieter. Employees check out in silence — quiet quitting. Companies nudge them out just as discreetly — quiet firing. And now, even the high-stakes theater of ad agency reviews has been muted. Advertisers are ditching the bloated pageantry of requests for proposals in favor of something more understated: no press, no pomp, just quiet deals behind closed doors.

Look at Coca-Cola. Its North America media review unfolded in near silence. Publicis Media secured the win, and only then did word get out. Now, Coca-Cola is ironing out the transition from GroupM, according to a source with direct knowledge of the process.

For some CMOs, this is the new playbook. The era of milking an agency review is fading. Now, discretion is the name of the game.

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Meta’s plan to potentially spin Instagram Reels into a standalone video app has sparked excitement among creators and influencer marketers — but also concerns that the move could disrupt creators’ brand partnerships on Instagram.

The notion that Meta is planning a Reels-spin off, reported by The Information last month, has created many questions for creators, including speculation over the potential decrease in Reels viewership, as well as concerns about whether Meta will allow creators to port over their Instagram followings to the new app, should the decision go through. A Meta representative did not respond to a request for comment prior to the publication of this story.

Although Meta allowed Instagram users to bring their followers with them to Threads when it launched the microblogging platform in 2023, it’s unclear whether the company would take a similar approach for Reels. Furthermore, creators and influencer marketers believe that forcing users to download a new video app could deter some of them from watching creators’ videos. In the case of a spin-off, these factors could reduce the reach of influencers, some of whom have hundreds of thousands of followers, who use Reels as brand partnership inventory.

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The presence of leading executives, including Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, at President Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration led many to believe that Big Tech would have a smooth course in the coming years, especially in any antitrust trial. 

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So, when it emerged that Google met Justice Department execs, encouraging them to roll back earlier proposed remedies, including the divestiture of web browser Chrome, in its search antitrust trial, many assumed its political influence would win out. 

However, developments later in the week suggest those efforts — Bloomberg claimed last week that Google’s arguments centered on maintaining the tech hegemony of U.S. companies — proved fruitless in the case, where Judge Amit Mehta ruled Google’s search market tactics were illegal last year.  

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When Amazon killed its TikTok-style feed, Inspire, last month, most advertisers were unsurprised. In their eyes, it just didn’t seem to have gained any real interest.

“It never really felt like it had enough traction, in terms of scale, to invest more than an initial test for many brands,” said Joe O’Connor, senior director of innovation and growth at Tinuiti. O’Connor noted that his team didn’t see much adoption from their clients, so they weren’t shocked that Amazon sunsetted it.

And while Amazon was nowhere near reliant on the video feed to generate any significant revenue, it’s still a little surprising that even the biggest e-commerce player couldn’t make social commerce work.

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A little over a month ago, a bombshell report documenting ad tech’s shortcomings in stopping the monetization of child sexual abuse material raised the ire of senior politicians and prompted leading names to tighten up their operations.

Since then, the industry debate has been intense, with a growing chorus calling for more vendor transparency. And with that has come some confusion as to how the industry’s leading demand-side platforms will respond.

IAB CEO David Cohen made his philosophy clear on how the industry should move ahead. “Instead of pointing fingers, it may make sense to talk about the misalignment of incentives … move the conversation from efficiency at all costs to effectiveness and starve bad actors from monetization,” he said in a LinkedIn statement.

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Being a working mother has never been easy — but in today’s world, the challenges are piling up faster than ever. 

International Women’s Day (March 8) is a moment to celebrate progress — but also to confront the realities that women, particularly working mothers, still face every day. 

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For Austin, Texas-based ad agency GSD&M, throwing a party during SXSW is a must.

The agency has called the city home for 53 years, according to GSD&M CEO Duff Stewart, and the party is a way to participate in the the South by Southwest festival and represent its hometown. What started as backyard concerts in 2009 has morphed into a mini-festival on the Monday night of SXSW, where somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 attendees will make a stop at the agency’s fete. Throughout the years, acts like The Hold Steady, Gary Clark Jr., Toro y Moi, Charley Crockett and Reggie Watts have taken the stage at GSD&M’s party.

The shop will kick off its 13th annual party at its headquarters in downtown Austin tonight, with Band of Horses headlining. Ahead of this year’s event, here’s the story of how the parties came to be, how they’ve grown, handled the pandemic and continue to this day, straight from the people who’ve built them.

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Roblox is ramping up its advertising push in 2025 — but the platform’s creator studios say they’re paying the price.

As Roblox has started selling more ads and sponsorship opportunities directly to brands, in-game creator studios argue that the shift is cutting into their own earnings — fueling growing frustration over how monetization is being shared.

For years, Roblox’s creator studios — in-game agencies that employ individual creators to build custom-branded worlds or integrate clients’ brands into their pre-existing experiences — have been among the metaverse platform’s most staunch supporters. Many of them have official partnerships with Roblox through the Roblox Partner Program, and have charged brands such as Vans and Nascar hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to design and build bespoke experiences and items. 

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As Google continues its legal battle in the search antitrust case, the giant is moving forward with expanding new search features powered by generative AI.

Last week, Google debuted an experimental “AI Mode” for search to let users ask follow-up questions. The feature, powered by the company’s new Gemini 2.0 model, will provide answers, real-time information, multimodal answers, and links within AI Overviews. The feature also uses Google’s ranking system from its knowledge graph with real-time data about places and products.

Google’s updates came just days before the company and the U.S. Dept. of Justice on March 7 filed final remedy proposals before a scheduled hearing in court next month. The DOJ’s proposal includes forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser, increasing transparency for its search ads business and introducing rules for data transparency and search partner interoperability. Google’s proposal includes barring exclusive pre-install deals for search, chrome and its Gemini assistant.

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A common story around the world of media agencies — notably holding company shops — is one of bolting on digital and lower-funnel expertise to their historical brand-building chops. In the case of iProspect, that expertise is flowing in the opposite direction, at last in its North American offices. 

Digiday has learned that North American CEO Liz Rutgersson, who took over in fall 2023, has moved three Dentsu veterans onto her executive leadership team — all three of whom bring broader more traditional chops to the team to widen out the agency’s ability to deliver up and down the funnel for its clients.

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WPP, no stranger to financial strains as of late, is facing another major headache. Though it’s not decided yet, one of its biggest spending advertisers — Coca-Cola — is considering a new partner for its biggest market in North America, according to three sources with knowledge of the account.

If Coca-Cola does opt for a change, Publicis Groupe is the frontrunner to handle its media dollars in North America, which is reportedly worth $620 million in the U.S., according to Comvergence data — but likely closer to $700 million including Canada, according to those sources.

Even if the account were to change, WPP isn’t being shut out entirely. It remains Coca-Cola’s global marketing partner under the OpenX model, which includes media and creative. And while the media account in North America is in flux, those same sources say the region’s creative business is expected to stay put.

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The Trade Desk (TTD) and media agencies are drifting apart — a conscious uncoupling that crept in slowly but is now moving fast. 

Agencies say their spending isn’t climbing like it used to, while The Trade Desk is busy chasing direct deals with advertisers. It’s not a full on breakup yet, but both sides are clearly eyeing other options. 

One holding company media buyer, who exchanged anonymity for candor, told Digiday that rising client investment in CTV — and the many DSPs that can be used to place such spend — meant their agency was becoming less reliant on The Trade Desk over time.

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When you think of influencer marketing, you typically picture brands working with a younger creator to target Gen Z (ages 13-28) or Gen Alpha (up to 12 years old). That’s not always the case. As the influencer marketing space and creator economy continues to grow, so-called silver influencers, or creators from Gen X (45-60 years old) and boomer generations (ages 61-79) are increasingly catching marketers’ attention.

Progresso Soup and Harmless Harvest, a coconut product company, are eyeing the older cohort of creators to earn some cultural cache and boost brand awareness. They’re not alone. Brands’ interest in Gen X and Boomer influencers has been on the uptick in recent years, according to previous Digiday reporting. Alaska Airlines, Mountain Dew and clean beauty brand Ilia have made similar campaigns over the past few years.

“They’re still [linear] TV watchers. But also, it’s a pretty social group,” said Maria Carolina Comings, vice president of the sweet and savory business unit at General Mills, referring to the soup brand’s 55-plus consumers. “So one of the places we went to was TikTok.”

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Creator company Whalar Group opened its doors to a newly-built co-working and production space in Los Angeles for creators in February. Named The Lighthouse, it’s not exactly a school, but not exactly an office either. For Whalar, the intention is to gather creators in one place and see what comes of it, whether that’s business ventures, funding or other creative pursuits, explained Neil Waller, co-founder and co-CEO of Whalar Group.

“Now, a week after when the space is open, I just see people talking to each other and agreeing to do things with each other just by the nature of being around each other,” Waller said in late February. “It’s literally everything we could have like dreamt of coming to fruition.”

The Lighthouse is a members-only place for creators to connect with fellow creators, work on attracting brand partnerships and access professional resources. That’s why Whalar sees it as akin to a university campus that aims to not just provide a networking and production ground for creators, but also act as a vehicle for brands to recruit talent — and prove that all these services under one roof can work as a business.

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The latest ad fiasco might suggest otherwise, but some marketers are finally shedding one of their deepest programmatic misconceptions.

Turns out, fixating on low-fee supply chains, or prioritizing ad tech intermediaries with the cheapest fees, was never the magic fix they hoped for. If anything, it’s looking more like a game of chasing rebates than a revolution in efficiency.

The cracks started showing when the math stopped adding up. 

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When Greg Swan first attended South by Southwest (SXSW) 17 years ago, it “cracked open” his world. 

“It’s a culture of people who start with ‘yes’ versus start from a ‘no’ or ‘we can’t’,” said Swan, senior partner and Midwest digital lead at Finn Partners.

Being surrounded by attendees with that mindset makes it a crucial stop for Swan, who has over the years changed his networking approach for the festival. Instead of seeking out the hottest parties, Swan now hosts what he calls “stranger dinners” each night, where he gathers eight to 10 attendees for dinner to talk about what they saw and debate ideas. That’s his plan for this year’s conference, which kicks off today and will run through March 15th in Austin, Texas.

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