Snap Inc. has announced that it has tapped real time audience insights platform Samba TV to provide data on conversion outcomes to Snapchat advertisers. Samba TV’s measurement capabilities currently extend to all of the major walled gardens, more than 200 national networks, local networks in 100 designated market areas and some 400 digital publishers. Advertisers will also be able to use the data to optimize ad spend.
Investment giant Fidelity has again taken the axe to the value of its shares in X Holdings which it helped Elon Musk buy when it was known as Twitter. Fidelity believes that the shares are worth 71.5% less than at the time of the purchase. The disclosure runs through end of November, a month in which Snap shares climbed 38.2% and Meta shares a more modest 4.9%.
Omnicom has completed the acquisition of cloud-based digital commerce platform Flywheel, which offers retail media management, digital shelf analysis, and competitive intelligence. Global marketing and comms company Omnicom views the acquisition as responsive to increasing customer demands for digital commerce and retail media solutions. The cost of the acquisition (over $800 million) may signal that holding companies are ready to invest in the retail media space.
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.