“To thine own shelf be true” would be a great motto for a retail consultancy, although UK-based GIG Retail hasn’t chosen it. But they are entering the U.S. with a package of services to help retailers build their own media networks, an increasingly popular project. So far, no one has protested too much.
Marketers will be targeting their messages long after third party cookies have shuffled off this mortal coil. Vibrant Media will be there to help with solutions that are based on classifying page content but go beyond the usual contextual targeting to build audiences based on keywords people have searched for, and then target ads to the audience members wherever they appear.
The investigation by Netherlands’ Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) was triggered by a complaint by Match Group (which owns Tinder and other dating apps). Match claims Google’s Android Play Store uses a dominant position to preclude use of other payment systems. Google, in a statement, says Match is eligible to use other (more expensive) options outside Google Play’s standard policies.
YouTube is not just a video platform, of course, it’s also a powerful search engine and it has begun testing a Google AI Overviews carousel that will appear in results for selected queries. Given the threat AI Overviews is perceived to pose to click-thru traffic in Google Search results, there’s a question about whether the YouTube initiative could depress click-thrus to brand and creator videos. Right now, the feature is only visible to a sub-set of U.S. premium users.