Are you a retail media fan? Here’s an upbeat DoubleVerify report that finds 61% of retail media buyers feel retail networks perform better than other channels. They’re not entirely thrilled, though: they cite high cost per thousand rates, limited targeting options, limited on-site ad space, and the lack of ad quality verification by third parties such as, well, DoubleVerify.
Truth be told, most advertisers are aware of waste in ad buying but accept it as part of doing business. Their bigger problem at the moment is the impending loss of third-party cookies. This eMarketer study finds that about 80% of programmatic ad buys still rely on cookied inventory (the figures vary by industry). Lots more on AI, TV measurement, streaming media, and walled gardens.
Are you a retail media skeptic? Then you’ll prefer this report from Turbyne, which aims to simplify retail media buying, which finds that 78% of brands said a complex buying process makes it difficult or very difficult to justify increasing their retail media investment. There’s a perception gap for sure: just 6% of larger brands would give their retail media experience an A, while 65% of retailers said that thought their clients would give them an A.
Microsoft has confirmed that Reddit has blocked its Bing search engine from crawling content; Reddit seems to have blocked DuckDuckGo too. Reddit content will still appear in Google search results, but then Google has paid Reddit $60 million to allow it to train its AI models on that content. Reddit says the block has nothing to do with the Google deal: okay.