Walmart Connect: Walmart’s Ambitious Advertising Plans For Its Programmatic Platform
Retail giant Walmart plans to build out its Walmart Connect advertising platform this year and is creating multiple new channels for advertisers to engage directly with its customers.
Walmart has improved its internal advertising prowess over the past several years, with retail media becoming increasingly important. On Walmart’s earnings call, the retailer discussed its global advertising business and how Walmart Connect, its United States arm, plans to innovate this year. In the fourth quarter ended Jan. 28, Walmart’s global advertising business reached $2.1 billion and active U.S. advertisers increased by 136%.
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The meaning of meaningful connections
The digital media presence is a tempting opportunity for advertisers. Big retailers have also stepped up their advertising offerings. These efforts imply an additional revenue stream derived from first-party data, as well as confidence that the retailers’ customers have more attention to spare for additional advertising.
Reach: Walmart states that 90% of American households with them in-store or online. Also, claims that more than 150 million customers shops every week. In a company blog post, Walmart Connect SVP and General Manager Rich Lehrfeld describe the connections the company is making between its customers, suppliers, and sellers.
“Our mission at Walmart Connect is to help brands and sellers meaningfully connect with these customers on their shopping journey – wherever that occurs – to find the right product or discover a new one.”
Walmart lists that these meaningful connections occur in omnichannel ways- stores, websites, apps, or the internet. Of course, the retail giant’s own digital properties play an extensive role in the journey that includes search and native display ads as well as social media.
Social Media: The #GetTheWChallenge for the football fans on TikTok to inspire their shopping for the Big Game.
AR Experience: The retail giant tapped customer attention using AR technology where they discovered new products through Walmart’s Gift Finder during the holiday season. They also purchased ingredients through co-created shoppable Pinterest recipes.
Expand Touchpoints: Walmart Connect plans to expand the touchpoints for customers to view ads and the types of advertisements they see through CTV, video, and omnichannel experiences, such as self-checkout screens, in-store events, sampling, and TV Walls. Moreover, Walmart.com will launch premium advertising experiences by the end of the year, including video and onsite advertising.
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Unlocking growth for suppliers and sellers
Suppliers and sellers will be able to reach customers more efficiently with automation. Lehrfeld explained,
“We recently rolled out Display Self-Serve to our first phase of advertisers, giving them more speed, flexibility and control with their display campaigns.”
Walmart Platform Partner program will also be expanded to assist sellers in scaling, automating, and optimizing search campaigns. Furthermore, Walmart Demand Side Platform (DSP) will be presented to more advertisers and will enable them to purchase offsite inventory in one place.
Its blog post explains that improving targeting and search capabilities will give advertisers more impact and customers a better experience. It will also be able to offer a more comprehensive end-to-end offering by expanding its measurement capabilities across its portfolio. Lehrfeld concluded
“We’re laser-focused on evolving Walmart Connect’s solutions to help advertisers make every media moment a retail moment, by connecting with customers in a meaningful way at any point in their shopping journey.”.
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GroupM Launches Programmatic Marketplace, Result of Licensing Deals with Magnite and PubMatic
The media investment division of WPP, GroupM, has launched a programmatic marketplace covering everything from Connected TV and online video and display ads. This is a result of GroupM’s licensing deals with SSP platforms Magnite and Pubmatic.
GroupM believes that the Premium Marketplace will allow advertisers more transparency in this otherwise lopsided ecosystem of internet ads.
The GroupM Premium Marketplace is an integrated and unified programmatic marketplace created through worldwide collaboration agreements with Magnite in North America and PubMatic in Europe and the Middle East. It comes in response to an RFP that urged vendors to show their capabilities in the fast-growing CTV industry as well as in high-growth areas.
GroupM also expands on its previous SPO efforts, codenamed Premium Supply, which saw it centralize programmatic spending to a small number of SSPs, including Magnite, PubMatic, and Index Exchange, strategies that have been deployed on Madison Avenue.
According to a press release, GroupM Premium Marketplace will –
“provide clients with direct and advantaged access to high-quality publisher inventory”
Ogury and The Trade Desk Partner To Offer Programmatic Mobile Advertising
Ogury and has announced a direct integration with The Trade Desk, both being leaders in advertising globally. Through this integration, media buyers can now have access to Ogury’s high-performance, privacy-protected mobile advertising capabilities.
This direct collaboration will enable agencies to create Programmatic Guaranteed campaigns, leveraging Ogury’s curated inventory, data targeting capabilities, and global presence to run ads more effectively, in accordance with an industry-wide trend toward Supply Path Optimisation.
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Thomas Pasquet, CEO, Ogury said –
“We’re glad to work more closely with The Trade Desk, one of the world’s leading DSPs. Programmatic buying represents an important part of our revenue. With this direct integration we’re simplifying the life of media buyers, allowing them to easily get access to our unique solution based on quality inventory and relevant targeting, with user privacy in mind.”
In this collaboration, The Trade Desk can take advantage of Ogury’s following integrated solutions:
- Expanded reach across mobile settings, with inventory available in both apps and on the mobile web.
- Brand-protection tools, such as pre-bid fraud prevention.
- Personified Targeting, which is not dependent on cookies or IDs, leverages proprietary data to target custom-defined, qualified leads at large.
- Direct access to Ogury’s partner inventory, with the purpose of lowering campaign costs.
- Ad placement via a portfolio of completely on-screen formats that show all of the ad’s pixels for the duration of the ad’s exposure period.
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While Ogury transactions have been accessible on The Trade Desk for some years, this new direct integration enables media buyers to quickly activate new types of partnerships like Programmatic Guaranteed.
Media buyers may now use a variety of buying strategies to obtain Ogury’s data-enriched impressions. Similarly, publishers in Ogury’s ecosystem gain from increased demand for their advertising inventory, which The Trade Desk’s brand and agency clients provide.
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Outbrain Launches New Native Advertising Header Bidding Capability
Outbrain, a recommendation platform, has announced the global launch of a new Native Advertising Header Bidding technology, which allows Outbrain to serve advertising on any ad placement, enabling media partners to enhance their monetization strategy.
Outbrain Native Ads are served via Native Header Bidding, which allows the Outbrain advertising network to programmatically bid into display and video ad units.
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According to the company, this strategic shift is intended to assist Outbrain media partners to optimize income from standard ad units while also giving Outbrain advertisers additional possibilities to broadcast their advertising and engage customers with Outbrain Native Ads.
Outbrain joins the Header Bidding market by harnessing its extensive integration with media partners, which gives unparalleled access to contextual performance and behavioral interest signals, allowing for more efficient bidding. As a consequence, consumers will have a more personalized and relevant ad experience, while advertisers will achieve optimum success.
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Ayal Steiner, Outbrain VP of Advertising said –
“Up until now, Outbrain ads were only shown in our recommendation feed but with Native Header Bidding, we now show ads also on display and video ad placements.”
Steiner added –
“The expected result is that users will experience more relevant ads served through native ad experiences that are much more user friendly, and Outbrain advertisers will benefit from more ad inventory which creates new opportunities to engage potential customers on the open web.”
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Samsung Ads Enables First Party-Data For Smart TV Ad Campaigns
Samsung Ads rolled out the Samsung Onboarding Partner Program with leading data management platforms (DMP) and other onboarding platforms to help advertisers plan and buy TV ads using their first-party data sets.
The program will provide advertisers access to the curated audiences through data management platforms that include Acxiom, Adobe, Experian, LiveRamp,Merkle, and Oracle. More partners are expected to join next year. The program is yet another addition to Samsung Ads’ growing AVOD offering pool. The onboarding partner program offers advertisers to plan and activate TV campaigns leveraging their first-party data, It helps them to gain higher returns (ROI) on their data investments.
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Audience Advisor Accessibility
Advertisers planning to leverage the new program will have access to Samsung’s predictive planning tool -Audience Advisor. This means that the media planning guidance will be based on advertisers’ preferred segments and own audience data as well as Samsung Ads’ proprietary first-party TV data. The Audience Advisor tool produces data-backed predictions of scale, reach, and ad frequency for future campaigns based on budget. These integrations will also be made available through the Samsung Ads DSP in the first half of 2022.
Justin Evans, Global Head of Analytics & Insights, Samsung Ads said,
“Now, marketers can activate their most valuable asset in the Samsung Ads Ecosystem, their curated audiences made up of their own combinations of first-party and third-party data.”
He further added,
“Data and audience-driven TV is the future for advertisers and Samsung Ads is committed to bringing to market new tools and partnerships for advertisers to leverage different datasets in a safe and secure manner across their media buys.”
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Buy Your Own Data
Samsung Audience Advisor -a predictive campaign planning tool was launched in Q2, 2021. It allows advertisers to plug in any combination of first- and third-party data to understand the scale, behaviors, and time spent by their target audience in ad-supported video on demand (AVOD).
AVOD lets brands quantify their reach opportunities and gain an understanding of how much reach and frequency they can achieve at various budget levels. Advertisers can get more reach, scale, and efficiencies when they curate audiences through one of the onboarded DMP partners with Samsung Ads.
By the first half of 2022, Samsung Ads will incorporate Onboarding Partner Program and Audience Advisor into its demand-side platform. Molly Lashner, Media Hub’s associate media director, in a statement,
“We’ve had success activating advertisers’ first-party data on the Samsung Ads platform and rely on partners like Samsung to create turnkey integrations like their Onboarding Partner Program. This allows us to gain greater insights into streaming TV audiences and make our CTV campaigns even more powerful.”
Samsung Ads enables advertisers to leverage their first-party data to deliver stronger campaigns and results while ensuring consumer privacy preferences. In an analysis of hundreds of 2021 ad campaigns, Samsung found promising results. Brands that leveraged their own data generated up to 161% higher conversion rates than campaigns that did not. For entertainment campaigns, the audience advisor identified and targeted audiences who hadn’t been using a client’s product for some time. The tool found that this resulted in a 300% lift in conversion compared with audiences who were not exposed to the ad within the target segment.
Evans said that brands have started choosing partners who bring “substantial proprietary data to the relationship” as AVOD continues its share of total TV viewership.
“We are seeing and expecting more advertisers to lean into the partnership with us because they’re attracted to the differentiated data and insights that we provide.”
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MMPWW Enters In An Exclusive Tech Partnership With Aqilliz In MENA
Ad-tech solutions provider MMP World Wide (MMPWW) has entered into an exclusive technology partnership agreement with Aqilliz which will cover the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and North American markets effective January 1, 2022. Aqilliz will authenticate audiences and establish data provenance within campaign environments.
Aqilliz – An Exclusive Technology Partner
The middleware technology provider specializes in providing seamless data collaboration and privacy compliance across the digital marketing ecosystem. Atom, Aqilliz’s proprietary, state-of-the-art data infrastructure, will enable federated learning, a machine-learning technique that allows distributed data sets to be queried and reconciled without the need to leave local storage. This ensures that all deterministic and probabilistic user identification happens within the context of local data protection laws.
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How Will The Partnership Contribute?
MMPPWW, an ad tech leader across EMEA and APAC, delivers full-funnel targeting and precision marketing solutions to help brands reach and engage consumers. The company’s in-house expertise paired with strategic industry alliances increases its clients’ ability to effectively monetize digital advertising inventory, which results in better campaign performance and a dynamic and transparent way to communicate through vibrant content.
Automation enables the company to scale the delivery of communications to consumers. The company’s goal is to create the next generation of ad tech solutions through data mining and attribution modeling while also offering cookieless targeting.
Aqilliz’s hybrid blockchain environment will enable MMPWW and its brands to maintain an immutable ledger of transactions that records all activities of audience identification and matching by partnering with Aqilliz. This ensures the highest level of data provenance, which is in line with the requirements stipulated by data privacy laws.
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And That’s What They Said
Ayman Hayder, CEO of MMPWW said,
“Compliance isn’t something that is negotiable, and as more legislative reforms come into effect, it’s crucial that we equip our clients with the right tools and technology so they can be fully prepared.”
He further explained that the partnership will have a huge impact on how data is transacted in light of the recent Data Protection Law and the creation of the UAE Data Office.
“We consider this a golden opportunity to ensure privacy-first solutions become more commonplace, and we are very excited to work exclusively with Aqilliz to bring their technology to the MENA market”.
Gowthaman Ragothaman, CEO of Aqilliz is extremely thrilled about this first-of-its-kind partnership and said:
“Legacy technologies in the advertising and marketing technology ecosystem are built for centralized operations. The future of digital advertising is built on managing the value exchanges between brands, platforms, and the consumer, for which we need decentralized solutions in order to be secure and compliant. None of the existing solutions are able to capture and carry consent and provenance across the digital supply chain in order to be compliant.”
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Outbrain Expands Video Offering With A Swiss Start-Up Acquisition
Open web recommendation platform Outbrain has strengthened its brand and video offering after entering a definitive agreement to acquire a Swiss contextual video start-up VI.
Video intelligence(VI) is a contextual video technology platform for digital and Connected TV media owners. It combines contextually matched content and in-stream video advertising for desktop, mobile, and CTV.
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The Deal Makes Absolute Sense
Outbrain works with many publishers who are indexing more towards videos such as Rakuten TV, Pluto TV, and Samsung TV Plus. Media owners and advertisers benefit from Outbrain’s acquisition of the company.
-vi’s contextual and machine learning technologies enable media owners to add relevant video content to their articles to enhance user engagement and monetization.
-vi’s solution is cookieless by design and serves media owners ranging from IDG to Der Spiegel and Funke.
-Advertisers can leverage the high-impact, incredibly viewable, brand-safe video ad inventory that drives awareness and engagement.
Recently, vi partnered with Samsung TV+ to get into the connected TV space.
Outbrain will acquire vi for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $55 million and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.
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And That’s What They Said
Yaron Galai, Co-Founder and Co-CEO said is excited to have the VI team on board and share significant synergies between both companies.
“The combination with vi will allow us to deepen our partnership with media owners, providing mid- and top-of-article video solutions. It will also expand our addressable market, introducing high-quality in-stream video inventory to support our brand advertisers.“
Kai Henniges, Co-Founder and CEO of VI said that both companies share the same vision of the future media.
“Our years of video expertise and unique offering for publishers and CTV providers are a perfect addition to Outbrain’s leading market position and premium global media owner partnerships. Together we will accelerate our mission to inspire, inform and entertain users by putting video in context.”
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Place Exchange Allows Audio Advertising In Grocery And Pharma Stores!
Through its collaboration with Quotient, a digital ad services platform for retailers, Place Exchange, an SSP for OOH inventory, said recently that it would begin allowing programmatic audio-based ad buys in grocery and pharmaceutical stores.
InStore Audio Network, which collects digital in-store audio messaging options among retailers in the United States, will provide the audio inventory. On a weekly basis, the network connects over 100 million customers through over 16,000 locations, including Albertsons, Safeway, Southeastern Grocers, CVS, and Rite Aid.
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Norm Chait, director for out-of-home product and sales at Quotient, said-
“Unlike a lot of other formats, you wind up having a full-store experience regardless of the aisle you’re in, and you can reach people with some degree of frequency to drive home a purchase,”
Quotient’s DSP, which offers both self-serve and managed solutions, allows buyers to access the in-store audio material, which is offered on a CPM basis.
The advertisements may be targeted using segments obtained from Quotient’s proprietary data, which is collected from aggregated opted-in mobile device IDs that show where individuals are, what stores they visit, and what screens they pass.
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Google Introduces New Ways For Publishers To Activate First-Party Data
Google unveils a new way for publishers to utilize first-party data for targeted advertising. Digital advertising is changing rapidly, and user privacy is at the heart of this change. Publishers, advertisers, and technology providers are rethinking and reimagining how they handle and use user activation to better protect people’s privacy online.
Google’s new offering lets publishers share Publisher-provided identifiers (PPIDs) with Google’s programmatic demand to improve their ad campaigns, targeting, and advertising experiences. Steve Swan, Product Manager, Google Ad Manager said in an announcement.
“By helping publishers expand the use of their first-party identifiers to more transaction types, like the Open Auction, our partners will be able to show ads that are more relevant to their audiences, which will increase the value of their programmatic inventory,”
What Is PPID?
As defined by Google in a blog post, Publisher provided identifier (PPID) allows publishers to send Google Ad Manager an identifier for use in frequency capping, audience segmentation, and targeting, sequential ad rotation, and other audience-based ad delivery controls across devices.
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The New System And Its Functioning
Publishers and advertisers will benefit from the new PPID sharing option because it helps protect their privacy.
- Google Ad Manager turns PPIDs into per-publisher partitioned IDs before sharing them with Google Demand, so users cannot be identified across different publishers’ sites and apps.
- As a result, Google Ads and Display & Video 360 collate anonymized data from publishers as a way to build audience segments.
- Advertisers can programmatically deliver relevant ads to publishers’ sites and apps using these segments based on first-party data.
- Furthermore, Publishers can earn more revenue in the auction while the data allows advertisers to unlock options, such as cross-device reach, frequency management, and creative optimization, without relying on cookies or other identifiers.
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Why Is This New Update From Google Important?
Steve Swan, Product Manager, Google Ad mentioned that Google prioritized this product area based on partner feedback. It will continue to create features that provide publishers with the data and identity tools they require to prepare and grow their businesses.
“Investing in first-party data is a privacy-forward way that publishers can increase the value of their programmatic inventory now and in the future.”
This move could help news outlets recoup some of the lost revenue from Google’s other policies in light of Google’s tumultuous relationship with publishers. This feature enables publishers to control what data is passed and to which bidders they send signals. The Ad Manager only routes signals on behalf of publishers, but it will not be able to read them. Likewise, advertisers who advertise on these publications can show a more targeted and useful inventory to readers while maintaining the privacy of users.
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Pikasso And Broadsign Launch Maiden Programmatic DOOH Campaign In Ivory Coast!
Broadsign, and Pikasso, a programmatic Out-of-Home firm based in the Levant, North Africa, and West Africa, have launched a programmatic DOOH campaign in Ivory Coast; making them pioneers of the same. This maiden campaign was displayed by a French DSP, the Displayce.
Francesca Vincenti, Head of Programmatic at Pikasso commented –
We are thrilled to have displayed the very first programmatic pDOOH campaign in West Africa, in the Main Malls of Abidjan, the economical Capital of Ivory Coast, and are pleased with our collaboration with major programmatic players such as Broadsign and Displayce.
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Vinceti also talked about how the collaborators’ confidence in Pikasso to execute this campaign, as well as their interest in the Ivory Coast market, shows that the area is receptive to all innovations; including the capacity to trade programmatically, as a clear step toward the future of advertising buying.
Furthermore, Vinceti expressed how enthralled Pikasso is for introducing programmatic buying to the market, and hopes that the advertisers avail this advantage to its optimum level.
Stuart McMahon, Director Business Development EMEA at Broadsign went on to record to say –
Programmatic DOOH adoption is growing worldwide, paving the way for more impactful campaigns that can reach consumers at multiple touchpoints throughout the day and speak to their experiences in the moment. This campaign is a testament to the power of programmatic DOOH in an omnichannel strategy and marks an exciting milestone for the Ivory Coast market
Kawarizmi, a French digital agency specializing in programmatic buying, bought the campaign as part of an omnichannel strategy. This strategy includes a strong retargeting presence on mobile and social media to maximize the connection between DOOH and mobile.
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