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Articles by Eric
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How to Protect Your Brand From Landing on Bad Websites
How to Protect Your Brand From Landing on Bad Websites
Over the last several months, we were all schooled on the pervasiveness of fake news and the harm it can cause. With…
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Why creativity and automation aren’t mutually exclusiveDec 19, 2016
Why creativity and automation aren’t mutually exclusive
There’s no dispute that so-called “programmatic” advertising tools have been a boon to digital marketers. With a few…
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The future is mobile video: How advertising must adapt or dieDec 13, 2016
The future is mobile video: How advertising must adapt or die
It’s well known that digital media audiences have increased their consumption of mobile video in recent years, but it…
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Digital advertising needs to put the user firstDec 9, 2016
Digital advertising needs to put the user first
Over the past two decades, a series of digital innovations have made it possible for advertisers to reach global…
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The mobile phone is not a smaller desktop computer. Don't treat mobile advertising like it is.Oct 19, 2016
The mobile phone is not a smaller desktop computer. Don't treat mobile advertising like it is.
The title of this post seems like a logical statement. However, when it comes to digital advertising, many in the space…
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Ad Tech: Stop Calling It An ApocalypseOct 8, 2016
Ad Tech: Stop Calling It An Apocalypse
Last week I wrote a piece for Adexchanger. I am reposting it below.
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Ad-blocking and a Flight to QualityAug 27, 2015
Ad-blocking and a Flight to Quality
This is yet another post about ad-blocking. Yet another, because seemingly every day there is one sounding the alarm…
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2 Comments
Activity
8K followers
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Eric Franchi posted thisCongratulations to Eddie Kim and the entire Memo team on their acquisition by Signal AI. Aperiam was an early investor in Memo. We backed Eddie because he was aiming to solve one of the most fundamental problems in earned media: proving that real people actually read the coverage. In a world of vanity metrics, Memo delivered actual readership data direct from publishers. That's a hard problem, and it took years of tenacity to build those relationships and earn the trust of Fortune 500 communications teams. The combination with Signal AI makes a lot of sense: integrating real readership data into an AI-powered reputation intelligence platform gives CCOs something they've never had before: a way to measure what actually matters. Proud to have been part of this journey from the early days and excited to see what comes next. Link in comments.
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Eric Franchi posted thisNew episode of Open Market just dropped. Viant Technology's Tim and Chris Vanderhook came on and we got into the "SaaSpocalypse" (and a lot more). Can you vibe code a DSP? A marketplace? Salesforce? A few things that stuck with me: - The LLMs are the commodity. Viant's token usage is up 10x, costs down 78%. You can swap foundational models with minimal change in output. Value accrues at the application layer: exclusive data and domain-specific infrastructure that can't be replicated with a prompt. - On autonomous advertising: Viant moved the human from the middle of the workflow to the front: define the goal, set the guardrails, let the AI execute. And the AI buys differently than humans. It values quality over cheap reach, pays higher CPMs, and the results bear out. - On being a CEO right now: You can't just be good at one thing. And if you're a founder, get out there with a point of view. The number one risk isn't being controversial, it's being invisible. I loved this one. Tim and Chris always bring the heat. Link in comments.
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Eric Franchi posted thisExcited to share that I’m joining Sharp Pen Media as an advisor. I’m doing this because I believe in what they’re building, and they believe I can help. I bring operating experience as a founder, investor perspective across 80+ adtech companies, and industry visibility I’ve built along the way. That’s a natural fit for what Sharp Pen needs to grow to the next level. When Joe and I started Open Market, I introduced him to companies like tvScientific, Scope3, and Viant. I saw firsthand how Sharp Pen thinks about communications, and the results they drove. One conviction I have: in an AI-accelerated world, marketing and distribution are the new strategic advantages. Product differentiation compresses fast. The companies that break out will own their narrative. Joe and the team help make that happen, fast. If you’re an adtech founder or exec looking to build your voice, happy to make an introduction. And if you’re interested in joining the team: they’re hiring.
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Eric Franchi shared thisGreat conversation on the Marketecture Media podcast last Friday with Melissa Burdick, cofounder and president of Pacvue where I recently joined the Board. We dug into the evolution of commerce media and how it is expanding beyond traditional retail, the role of AI in reshaping product discovery, the rise of agentic commerce, and why measurement and incrementality are becoming the real differentiators. Melissa has one of the sharpest perspectives in the space and it showed. Also the now-famous custom Aperiam x Pacvue Nikes made its way into the discussion with Ari Paparo. If you're interested in a custom pair with your company’s logo, hit me up I can get you connected. Link in comments.
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Eric Franchi shared thisSuper proud of Nick Franchi for his contributions to Penn State THON™ , the largest student-run philanthropy in the world. Fundraising and operating across teams in a live environment for an amazing cause. Excited to see him continue to build in this direction.Eric Franchi shared thisOne month ago today, I had the incredible opportunity and privilege to participate in my first Penn State THON™ weekend. THON is the largest student-run philanthropy organization in the world, raising millions of dollars each year to support children and families impacted by pediatric cancer. This year, a record-breaking $18,841,726.53 was raised to benefit Four Diamonds, helping to cover medical expenses and fund critical research in pursuit of a cure. I was honored to serve as a selected member of a 30 person First-Year Committee in the Donor and Alumni Relations (DAR) branch, led by two incredible captains. Our responsibilities extended far beyond just DAR, including fundraising, security, and supporting the overarching mission in any way we could throughout the weekend. In addition to my role as a committee member, I also had the special privilege of performing onstage with my a cappella group, Shades of Blue. The mission of THON is truly special, and the love inside the Bryce Jordan Center was infectious. I'm beyond grateful to have been a part of it and look forward to continuing my involvement for the remainder of my time at Penn State. FTK!
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Eric Franchi posted thisThis week on the pod, Joe and I sat down with Cody Schneider. Cody actually used an AI agent to pitch himself to get on the show. The agent researched us, crafted the outreach, and made the case for why he should be a guest. What followed was one of the most intense conversations we’ve had to date. Some things we touched on: - Agents running outbound and prospecting - Designing agent workflows instead of traditional SaaS stacks - How small teams are getting massive leverage by chaining agents together This conversation genuinely shifted how I’m thinking about agents, how they will show up and when (aka, sooner than you may think). I’m already working on implementing a few of the ideas we discussed. Check it out, link below.
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Eric Franchi posted thisDifferent kind of Open Market episode this week. Joe and I talk about how we’re both using AI for almost everything we do. We come at it from different angles, but we both feel like it gives us 10x+ leverage. A few things we covered: - How I use AI daily as a VC: effectively a team of analysts helping evaluate deals, draft documents, model scenarios, map my network, and more - How Joe uses AI as the CEO of an agency: training models vertically on clients, collaborating with them on writing, and systematically stripping out “bot-speak" - Plus the Block layoffs and why the broader conversation around AI is still so polarized Curious how others are using AI day-to-day? Link in comments.
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Eric Franchi posted thisTwo weeks left to apply for the POSSIBLE 2026 Brand Challenge. If you're building an AI-powered solution for digital marketing - measurement, creative optimization, media decisioning, automation, analytics - this is your shot to pitch live on the Innovation Stage in Miami Beach (April 27-29). Judges are Sam Bloom (PMG), Jenna Griffith (Paypal Ads), Mayuran Yogarajah (Index Exchange), Andrew Covato (Growth by Science), and Corey Ferengul from Aperiam. Here's how it works: - 6 finalists get selected to compete live - Day 1: 5-minute no-slides pitch - Day 2: 10-minute mock sales pitch + live Q&A with the judges - Winner gets industry recognition, advisory access from Aperiam and GBS, and promotion across POSSIBLE's channels Applications close March 16 (link below). Free to apply. Finalists get a complimentary pass to POSSIBLE.
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Eric Franchi posted thisExcited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.
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Eric Franchi reacted on thisEric Franchi reacted on thisToday was a very happy day for us, as we finally opened our second academy, Day 1 Jiu-Jitsu in Newton, MA This wasn’t an overnight idea. Marcos, Hana, Rayra and I started talking about it in November 2024. In May of last year, we signed the lease, and after another 10 months and 2 weeks of permits, construction, and inspections, we are finally here. It felt amazing to see everyone training and having a great time. Our goal is to do the same thing we did in Bedford - MA: improve the community around the gym by offering world-class Jiu-Jitsu classes, focused on a family environment where parents and kids can come and learn BJJ with us. We hope to make Newton an even better place to live for those who love Jiu-Jitsu. We are incredibly thankful for Marcos and Hana, who moved to Massachusetts in 2021 to dedicate their lives to growing our first school. When we have great people around us, it becomes much easier to dream bigger, and today was a big step in that direction. We’re also very thankful to all our instructors and students. At the end of the day, a Jiu-Jitsu school is a group of instructors teaching many students, and without them, none of this would be possible. We love you all ❤️ We would also like to give a shoutout to “All Matters” by Alexandre Mol. Dealing with construction is never easy, but Alexandre mentioned that one of the core values of his company is honoring every commitment they make to their clients. Even with the ups and downs that come with any construction project, they delivered on every single thing they promised. Thank you, Alexandre and All Matters. Last but not least, thanks also to Fuji Mats for the support with the mats.
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Eric Franchi liked thisEric Franchi liked thisThe discovery layer is moving upstream, but the monetization infrastructure hasn't caught up. The data is converging from multiple directions: Bijan Dayan at Merchkit reported brands seeing 30-50% drops in organic search volume, PayPal's Honey data shows shopping journeys increasingly starting on ChatGPT, and Criteo, which processes $1 trillion in annual e-commerce transactions, reports traffic from AI discovery is already 1.5x more qualified than standard inbound. Michael Komasinski's argument: discovery is the bigger TAM. Search is a subset of it. The intent signal is what makes this shift structurally different. AI query intent averages 25 words. Search averages fewer than 2. That's a different kind of consumer entirely, arriving with context that search never provided. What we still need to understand is where the new AI search layer sits, and who controls it. According to Joe Marchese at AdEF, the major LLMs won't be the drivers behind replacing search. They have too much at stake to corrupt their credibility as agnostic platforms. The change will come from a new application layer built on top of them. These applications will likely be vertical models trained to recommend specific brands invisibly, without disclosure, in ways the consumer never sees. A personal agent should optimize for the user, not for whoever is bidding. The current auction model gets routed around entirely. SEPHORA is already testing this with its new OpenAI partnership announced at Shoptalk, where users can get curated beauty advice based on their preferences, link their Beauty Insider profile, and potentially complete their purchase in-app via ChatGPT. All of this means the brands that want to win in an agentic commerce world need to reach people before the agent gets involved. Not through sponsored listings or performance units, through the choices people make when setting their agent's preferences in the first place. That's a different kind of marketing problem than the industry has ever had to solve, and it's arriving faster than most planning cycles can accommodate. Todd Sawicki (who built Gumshoe AI) is already tracking how AI models talk to key brand-specific personas across the major LLMs, and what to do when they aren't saying the right things. How are you planning to reach people before the agent does? Are you thinking about this at all? If not, it might be worth a problem-solving session. My DMs are open.
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Eric Franchi liked thisEric Franchi liked thisCongratulations to WME Group, 160over90, and Publicis Groupe on the announcement of this important transaction. 160over90 has built a differentiated platform spanning sports, culture, experiential, and brand marketing, and Publicis represents a compelling strategic fit as the business enters its next phase. Exceptionally proud of The Raine Group team (Christopher Donini Daniel Miller Evan Ellsworth James Dolan Charlotte Saxe Daphne Chao) for its work advising WME as exclusive financial advisor on the deal, and grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of such a strong collective effort. Excited to watch the continued momentum ahead for everyone involved. https://lnkd.in/ec2JP6_j
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Eric Franchi liked thisEric Franchi liked thisAn update: 8 years and 3 months ago, Bostjan Spetic introduced me to Gilad de Vries. You’ll never guess what happened next… 8 years, 2x new business lines, 1x IPO, dozens of innovation projects, 3x acquisitions, 1x mega-merger that wasn’t meant to be (stories!), 1x mega merger that was meant to be, billions in revenue (and revenue for publishers), partnerships with the biggest and best companies on the planet, hundreds of allies and deep friendships formed, and, above all a deeply transformative experience. Yesterday was my last day at Teads. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many at Teads (fka Outbrain), not least Yaron Galai, David Kostman, and Gilad for trusting me to co-pilot through some of the most exciting (and hardest) work possible. I’ll miss too many colleagues and friends to list here - but I’ll be forever-supporting from the sidelines! What next? Ferenc Huszár and I are building Reasonable Technology Limited as cofounders, more on that very soon. Joining Outbrain was always supposed to be my last role before building from the start. To do that now with the full support (and angel investment) of David Kostman is the only way to leave such a great team. Big love, Teads.
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Eric Franchi liked thisBig thanks to Joe Zappa and Eric Franchi for inviting me on the Open Market pod. We kicked it off with the prolific effect of Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs and came in hot on building, operating, communicating… what’s broken and needs fixing, why now is YOUR time, and how to lift people up. I’ve been listening to this pod since its inception, and it was a lot of fun being on the other side of the mic. Highly recommend listening and subscribing to Open Market. https://lnkd.in/gmZnmce6Eric Franchi liked thisToday on Open Market, Marketecture CEO Jeremy Bloom joins Eric Franchi and me to talk about the rise of a new kind of adtech media. Jeremy made the jump from operator to media CEO, and that decision says a lot about where the industry is headed. The old model of trade journalism is giving way to something else: media built by founders, operators, and practitioners. In the episode, we break down: + Why Jeremy left the operating side of adtech to build a media company + What traditional coverage gets wrong about the industry + How traditional and new media complement each other and why traditional media is still valuable + How founders should navigate this new media landscape If you’re building in adtech, you’re not just competing on product anymore. You’re competing on narrative and distribution. Open Market is part of the Marketecture network, and Eric co-hosts the flagship Marketecture pod with Ari Paparo. We are not owned by Marketecture. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your pods.
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Eric Franchi liked thisEric Franchi liked thisToday on Open Market, Marketecture CEO Jeremy Bloom joins Eric Franchi and me to talk about the rise of a new kind of adtech media. Jeremy made the jump from operator to media CEO, and that decision says a lot about where the industry is headed. The old model of trade journalism is giving way to something else: media built by founders, operators, and practitioners. In the episode, we break down: + Why Jeremy left the operating side of adtech to build a media company + What traditional coverage gets wrong about the industry + How traditional and new media complement each other and why traditional media is still valuable + How founders should navigate this new media landscape If you’re building in adtech, you’re not just competing on product anymore. You’re competing on narrative and distribution. Open Market is part of the Marketecture network, and Eric co-hosts the flagship Marketecture pod with Ari Paparo. We are not owned by Marketecture. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your pods.
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Eric Franchi
8K followers
Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.
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Aung Thura
Ignite | Marketing… • 3K followers
Sooo... how can the same product, from the same company, with the same experience; suddenly grab market share from the market leader. No flashy launch, no innovation, no nothing. Change your brand positioning. How about if you are Anthropic (Claude), and you go up against a powerful government department like the DoW? Your intent was not brand position change; that'd be too pedestrian. There is of course, a lot of nuances in what happened; but the market does not care about the nuance - most of which I am most likely missing. The market cares about what they see and hear and feel. The Brand Positioning Deck on Amodei's laptop on never changed. Perceptions of the market changed of what Anthropic was. What it stood for, how far it will go for something as abstract, yet important as principles. As an aside: Amodei has re-engaged DoW and opened negotiations again as of late last week. Anthropic is still a business; and sometimes the market make a lot of assumptions, so you never know what is going on behind the scenes. But the users have made up their minds of what OpenAI and Anthropic stands for - rightly or wrongly. Both CEOs played a big role in this evolution. Speaking of CEOs and big companies and their 'products,'.... Nah, that'd be too easy. https://lnkd.in/gyfapkyF
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Joe Zawadzki
AperiamVentures • 9K followers
My First AI Post @2025 (and thank you to the Aperiam AI Fellows and to Dawn West and Alex Netelkos for making that happen!): If viewability was the training wheels of digital measurement, attention is the carbon-fiber racing bike we’ve just learned to ride. Erica kicked us off by pointing out the obvious: “viewable” doesn’t mean “seen,” and certainly doesn’t mean “engaged.” McKinsey’s neat formula — time × focus × intent — resonated as a starting point, but the real magic is in using that across channels and across the funnel. Why does this matter now? Because omni-channel is no longer a buzzword — it’s the messy, lived reality. CTV, digital out-of-home, mobile gaming, social feeds — each has wildly different engagement norms. An attention metric gives marketers and publishers a lingua franca, a Rosetta Stone to compare value and outcomes without pretending a click on a banner is the same as leaning into a big-screen spot. Publishers want credit for premium environments. Marketers want to normalize buys across hundreds of brands, countries, and media types. Attention-weighted CPMs (ACPMs) start to solve both. Even a global CPG can look across Meta, YouTube, stadium signage, and print — and make sense of it. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than a stack of inconsistent KPIs and gut feel? Absolutely. And yes, AI is in the wings — not as the protagonist, but as the stagehand making the hard stuff easier. It can normalize messy data, connect attention signals to outcomes, and embolden teams to try bolder experiments. Which brings us to the closing provocation: What if a few brave brands and publishers agreed to really transact on attention — rough edges, no gaming, shared responsibility for outcomes? The moment feels right to test whether attention can become not just a metric, but a currency. Marc Guldimann Adelaide David Zapata AB InBev Michael Shields Cory Treffiletti Rembrand McKinsey & Company
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Sam Karow
Effective Marketing… • 4K followers
Advanced measurement is moving from a “nice to have” to a requirement for brands that want to prove how marketing drives real business outcomes.✅ Nowhere is this more visible than in Retail Media Networks. RMNs like Instacart give brands access to closed-loop performance data tied to actual purchases. That data is powerful, but it also raises an important question for marketing leaders: How do we validate results beyond platform-reported metrics and understand true incremental impact? This is why third-party measurement is becoming a critical part of the RMN conversation. Circana has emerged as a leading independent measurement partner for retail media performance, including Instacart. By combining retailer point-of-sale data with broader market and category intelligence, Circana helps brands understand not just what sold, but what actually changed because of advertising. https://lnkd.in/gp4CghWf For food and beverage brands, this matters because RMN performance rarely exists in isolation. Retail media influences household penetration, repeat rates, brand switching, and category growth, not just attributed sales within a single platform. Third-party measurement helps separate signal from noise by providing a consistent view across retailers, channels, and time. The broader industry trend is clear. As RMN budgets grow, marketers are being asked to answer harder questions around incrementality, brand impact, and long-term growth. Platform dashboards alone are no longer enough. At Effective, we see advanced media performance reporting as a layered system. Platform data shows what happened. Third-party measurement helps explain why it happened and whether it was truly incremental. Together, they create a clearer connection between media investment and business results. This is how performance reporting evolves from tracking activity to proving impact. Jeff O'Shaughnessy Joelle Kaplan #MarketingMeasurement #RetailMedia #MediaPerformance #Incrementality #F&B #MarketingEffectiveness
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Eric Franchi
8K followers
Here's a great example of AI-first adtech creating real business value for media companies. Aperiam portco Gray Swan is partnering with Operative to bring AI-powered observability to media companies managing converged linear, streaming, and digital advertising operations. GraySwan's agentic AI layer continuously monitors performance signals across supply, demand, pricing, and delivery. It automatically surfaces anomalies, inventory and pricing optimizations, and incremental revenue opportunities in real time. No more hours spent pulling reports or missing critical signals. As Zeev Neumeier, GraySwan's Founder and CEO, put it: media is now a data-driven business, and the power comes from turning that data into action. Proud to support the team GraySwan as they bring this vision to the world's leading media brands.
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Joe Scartz
Publicis Commerce • 2K followers
For years, we've watched retail media continue to fragment often operating on the promise of "closed-loop data" rather than verifiable, standardized results. In 2025, with IAB's new Commerce Media Standards going live, we're seeing the inevitable fallout: brand satisfaction with RMN transparency has plummeted from 66% to 44%. The market is demanding accountability. Brands are done asking for proprietary dashboards; they're demanding shared, IAB-aligned proof. The old JBP (Joint Business Plan) is evolving into something more like the JVP (Joint Value Partnership), where outcomes replace obligations and standardization is the currency. 👉 Read the full perspective : https://lnkd.in/giDQc9jY #RetailMedia #JBP #JVP #CommerceMedia #Transparency #MediaAMP
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Nick Tran
First Round Collective • 93K followers
On paper Boost Mobile x Liquid Death have no business doing a collab. In culture it makes perfect sense. There is no overlap of products, distribution, or consumption occasions. So why would they team up if there is no category adjacency. What matters here is shared positioning. Both brands define themselves as disruptors in industries where consumers have long felt taken advantage of. → Liquid Death takes bottled water and flips it with irreverence. → Boost takes on the Big Three carriers with a promise of transparency. The common ground is not the product, it’s the attitude. That is why the Cellphone Bill character feels so natural. It is grotesque, absurd, and culturally resonant. It looks and feels like a Liquid Death idea, but it dramatizes the pain points of the wireless industry. In that move, Boost borrows credibility and attention from an audience already primed to enjoy it. Partnerships like this don't need to make sense in a traditional way. They are about association and shared codes. → Associating with Liquid Death transfers its entertainment-first equity to Boost. → Associating with Boost gives Liquid Death a new canvas to extend its creative IP. For Boost, the strategy is clear. They cannot outspend Verizon or AT&T, but they can out-entertain them and dramatize consumer frustration in ways incumbents never will. For Liquid Death, it is proof that the brand is not just a canned drink, but a cultural IP factory that can collaborate with other disruptors. Together, this is less about selling phone plans or water and more about building relevance through shared cultural disruption. That association is enough.
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Daniel Best
4K followers
Retail Media – What’s Driving Growth? A new Digiday piece highlights how US CPG advertisers are moving away from third‑party cookies and doubling down on CTV, contextual, and retail media as alternatives. That mirrors what we found in our Ascentinel survey of the UK retail media market. While the survey wasn’t solely FMCG focused, there were strong parallels when asking the buy side what’s driving growth. The top three ranked drivers were: 1) First‑/second‑party data access 2) Closed‑loop measurement / sales attribution 3) Proximity to purchase / the digital shelf Is it a surprise that cookie decline ranked much further down the list? Advertisers are actively seeking more accountable, closer‑to‑purchase signals. For anyone building or scaling a retail media network - or supporting those who do - the direction of travel is clear: >Standardised data & measurement >Quality of data and the ability to measure ROAS >The cookie fading into the background If you’d like to explore the insights from the study - from competitor rankings to market growth - let’s connect. https://lnkd.in/eFFPqZV5
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Chris Gurciullo
Adsquare • 6K followers
The end cap is the prime location for in-store retail media, so it makes sense as a space ripe with innovation potential. Retailers such as Kroger and CVS Pharmacy are beginning to install digital screens on end caps to expand their in-store advertising networks, opening up new opportunities to appeal to consumers. Along with product advertising, these screens can be used to highlight seasonal promotions, sales events, and other time sensitive events. 🔗https://lnkd.in/e4tRfiVE
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Julie Van Ullen
iSpot • 5K followers
If you don’t verify the audiences your ads actually reach, how often and where, you’re never going to see investments and outcomes clearly. It's that simple. (Anyone who says differently isn’t being honest.) Props to our partners at Walmart Connect for backing up their awesome platform with iSpot's ability to prove it against hundreds of streaming and linear channels. Transparency FTW. I won't jump on the nose joke bandwagon. This is serious stuff! Brings a happy tear to my eye, however!😊 #unifiedmeasurement #integritymatters #transparency
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Kristy Chilman
The Brand Architect • 3K followers
Meta’s Agentic Commerce signals a bigger shift than shopping features. eComm brand owners take note. There was an interesting moment in Meta’s latest earnings call that didn’t get a lot of mainstream attention. Zuckerberg and CFO Chad Heaton discussed “agentic shopping tools”. AI agents that help people find very specific products, remember preferences over time, and eventually make decisions on a user’s behalf. They described these agents as sitting between shoppers and merchants, blending subscriptions, advertising, and commerce into one experience. On the surface, it sounds like another product roadmap update. But if you’ve spent time in eCommerce, it’s hard not to read this as something more structural. Most online shopping today still relies on the same basic behaviour: people browse, compare, get influenced, and then decide. Agentic shopping flips that sequence. Instead of someone scrolling through options, they tell an AI what they want and the AI does the filtering. Not just by keywords, but by memory. Past purchases. Returns. Preferences they’ve never formally written down but have shown through behaviour. Think less “recommendations” and more delegation. “Find me something like the jacket I bought last winter, but lighter, under $250, and not from a brand that took three weeks to ship.” That’s not search. That’s outsourcing the decision. Meta’s interest here makes sense when you zoom out. If an AI agent becomes the place where people decide what to buy, then Meta isn’t just hosting ads anymore. It’s shaping the decision environment itself. Ads, subscriptions, product discovery, and checkout start to blur together. The platform isn’t trying to send traffic somewhere else, it’s trying to mediate the entire journey. In that setup, the value isn’t attention. It’s trust and relevance at the exact moment a decision is being made. This is where things change for eCommerce brands. When the “buyer” is an AI agent, a lot of the tactics we’ve relied on for years start to matter less. Hooks don’t impress an algorithm. Brand storytelling doesn’t override poor fulfilment. A polished funnel doesn’t fix inconsistent sizing or high return rates. Agents evaluate patterns. They learn which brands deliver on time, which ones cause friction, which products get kept. Over time, that becomes the filter through which brands are surfaced. What’s interesting is that this rewards the unglamorous stuff. It rewards brands that are clear on who they’re for, realistic with pricing, operationally sound, and consistent over time. In a world where people stop browsing and start delegating, it’s no longer: “How do we get more people to click?” It becomes: “Would an AI confidently recommend us without needing persuasion?” That’s a harder question. But it’s also a more honest one. And it suggests that the next phase of eCommerce growth will come from being genuinely easy to choose.
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▪️ Jed Murphy
id8 retail • 3K followers
Brands pay for eyeballs. Sponsored search, hero banners, featured shelf positions - all designed to catch a shopper mid-browse. Now ask yourself: what happens when the shopper isn't browsing at all? Agentic AI is quietly reshaping how purchasing decisions get made. AI systems that don't just recommend - they retrieve, evaluate and execute. Autonomously. The implications for retail media are significant. Not in five years. Now, in the way the infrastructure and data strategies are being set. The retailers who expose clean, structured, machine-readable data will be discoverable. The ones whose product information is locked in formats built for human screens may simply be invisible. Same economics - brands paying for advantage - but a fundamentally different delivery mechanism. I've broken this down in a short carousel. Would genuinely welcome thoughts from anyone working in this space - is this on your radar yet? #RetailMedia #AgenticAI #DataStrategy #Loyalty #id8retail
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Kevin Mero
JobRx.com • 14K followers
Kroger’s retail media business collaborating with Google The partnership will allow advertisers to access SKU-level retail media conversion reporting on YouTube for the first time, giving them more visibility into how advertising drives sales. https://lnkd.in/gnf3TbQp
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Jay Friedman
Stealth • 6K followers
Two common scenarios: 1) You're a CPG. You have 50+ RMNs chasing you for commitments. Or 2) You're an RMN, competing with 50+ others, many of whom are much larger than you. How do you allocate as a brand? How do you compete as a mid-size retailer? Angela Myers gives fantastic advice. https://lnkd.in/gCjggFd4
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Maor Sadra
INCRMNTAL • 11K followers
we've posted a couple of reports in the past - but I think that this one is the BEST and most interesting one we published (...so far...) this is a true comparison of "attribution" vs. incrementality - comparing the actual aggregated, weighted, and indexed results based for the clients who share attribution data with INCRMNTAL Super interesting - get it below!
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Eric Sheinkop
The Desire Company • 6K followers
Nearly three out of four shoppers now point to Retail Media Networks as a key influence on what they buy. That momentum is changing everything for brands. Caroline Tolbert and Jeremy Rothschild will be at Ad Age’s Business of Brands conference to share the results from our recent survey of top brand executives. The survey reveals how leaders are thinking about today’s shopper journey and the strategies that create real engagement. They are excited to spotlight the creativity and leadership making waves at the 2025 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀, honoring the work that is moving the industry forward. If you want to hear what is driving results for brands right now, be sure to connect with Caroline and Jeremy at Business of Brands. The future of content and commerce is happening here.
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Andrew Nelson
Silverback Strategies • 2K followers
Meta just confirmed what I've been arguing for months. In their Q4 earnings call, they explicitly stated that investments in GEM (Generative Engagement Models) are improving ad performance and attracting more ad dollars. [FULL QUOTE BELOW] Most marketers will hear this and think: "More AI hype." They're wrong. Meta has fundamentally re-engineered its ad platform at the technical level. It's invisible to most people: -Consumers just see better ads at the right time -Advertisers see the same campaign manager interface -Unless you've hit a scaling wall, you might not notice anything I wrote about this shift a few weeks ago (link in comments): Meta moved from interest-based targeting to predictive intent. From "show ads to people who like yoga" to "show ads to people our system predicts will buy yoga mats in the next 72 hours, regardless of their stated interests." That's not an incremental improvement. That's a different product. Here's what frustrates me about all the AI hype: everyone's trying to predict how this technology will change the world in 10 years. Meanwhile, the companies that invented this stuff—Google, Meta—are already using it. Not in some flashy consumer app. In their ad stacks. Because that's what drives their stock price. If you're still running Meta ads the same way you did two years ago—optimizing around interests, testing endless creative variations, obsessing over attribution—you're putting the same gas you use for your Corolla into a rocket ship. The platform has changed. Your strategy needs to change with it. What does that mean practically? Feed the algorithm more signals. Give it conversion data. Give it the creative diversity it needs to learn what works. Let it find your customers instead of you trying to define them. Trust the predictive engine you're paying to access. The marketers who adapt to this shift will scale. The ones who don't will keep hitting walls they can't explain. --- Susan Li, CFO "In Q4, we doubled the number of GPUs we used to train our GEM model for ads ranking. We also adopted a new sequence learning model architecture, which is capable of using longer sequences of user behavior and processing much richer information about each piece of content. The GEM and sequence learning improvements together drove a 3.5% lift in ad clicks on Facebook and a more than 1% gain in conversions on Instagram in Q4. This new sequence learning architecture is significantly more efficient than our prior architectures, which should enable us to further scale up the data, complexity and compute we use in our future ranking models to deliver performance gains. As we scale up our foundational ads models like GEM, we are also developing more advanced models to use downstream of them at run-time for ads inference. In Q4, we launched a new runtime model across Instagram Feed, Stories, and Reels, resulting in a 3% increase in conversion rates in Q4."
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Eric Fan
LUMOS • 5K followers
Love this - AI is the Oppenheimer moment for marketing. It fundamentally collapses the time and cost of production. A $2.5 million campaign that used to take four months can now be delivered for $500,000 in four weeks. Legacy firms that charge based on hours with the 'time-driven' model are existentially threatened by this.
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Brad Hendrickson
Magnetic Creative • 4K followers
Agency Perspective: We are seeing retailers going all in on their own retail media networks, and they’re not subtle about it. Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Target’s Roundel, Kroger Precision Marketing have become serious media businesses, fueled by first-party data, loyalty programs, closed-loop attribution, and increasingly sophisticated AI and programmatic tech. For retailers, this isn't just experimentation within their 4 walls, its a massive margin game. Brands need to know this... For brands, this is where mistakes get made as of late. Although retail media is incredibly powerful inside the four walls for: -Capturing demand -Winning the moment of purchase -Proving ROI in a way CMOs and CFOs both like It does not create brands, it extracts value from them. If your strategy is overly weighted to RMNs, you’re betting that consumers already know you, trust you, and prefer you. Most brands don’t earn that luxury. What’s happening now for brands is dangerous: Brands are optimizing for conversion while starving the very things that create demand. The strongest brands are doing both of these things, and doing so deliberately: -Using retail media to harvest intent, and -Investing outside the retailer to build it: brand platforms, storytelling, cultural relevance, PR, creators, and experiences that exist long before a shopper hits the shelf or the search bar. Retail media decides where the sale happens. Brand building decides whether the sale happens at all. The next wave of winners won’t be the brands with the biggest RMN budgets. They’ll be the ones that understand the difference between performance efficiency and brand power....and fund both accordingly. Written by a human, not AI. LFG ⚡
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