Sending loud signals that its ambitions exceed delivering your dinner, DoorDash has spent $175 million to buy retail media platform Symbiosys to boost its off-site advertising capabilities. Advertisers, from enterprise CPG leaders to local restaurants, utilize DoorDash in an attempt to reach high intent customers. That reach will now be expanded across search, social, and off-site display.
In another example of a global advertising agency bringing tech inhouse, PMG has acquired retail media platform Momentum Commerce. Integrating Momentum with PMG’s Alli platform (AI-powered analytics) will allow signals from the 37 million products and 880,000 brands tracked by Momentum to be translated into media and creative outcomes. The acquisition follows a long history of partnership between the two entities.
There’s no shortage of lawsuits by publishers against genAI platforms for copyright infringement; now major studios are getting with the program. Walt Disney and Comcast’s Universal are accusing Midjourney of using some of their best known characters (think Darth Vader and the Minions) in its AI image generator — a “bottomless pit of plagiarism,” they say. No response yet from Midjourney.
It barely feels like news when industry giants add AI features, since that’s what they’re expected to do. But lots of people use their products, so their announcements are probably of higher interest than most. With that in mind, let’s note that Adobe has just announced general availability of agents for audience creation, journey orchestration, experimentation, journey insights, website optimization and agent support.