Deals & Moves

Uber announced its advertising business surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, driven by sponsored listings, display ads, and journey ads across Uber and Uber Eats platforms. The advertising division grew over 80% year-over-year with over 700,000 active advertisers. This milestone establishes Uber as a significant player in the mobility and delivery advertising space.

Lyft officially launched Lyft Ads Platform, enabling brands to reach riders through in-app and in-ride advertising formats including sponsored locations and display ads. The platform leverages Lyft's first-party data on 20+ million active riders and their travel patterns. This launch positions Lyft to compete with Uber's advertising business in the mobility advertising space.

DoorDash acquired Bbot, a restaurant ordering and marketing platform, for approximately $150 million to enhance its advertising technology for restaurant partners. Bbot's technology enables restaurants to manage their own ordering channels and customer data, complementing DoorDash's advertising platform. The acquisition strengthens DoorDash's position in restaurant technology and advertising services.

TikTok officially launched TikTok Shop in the United States, integrating e-commerce directly into the social media platform with shoppable video ads and live shopping features. The launch created a new social commerce advertising channel combining content, community, and transactions in one platform.

Marketing platform Skai secured strategic investment from Sequoia Capital to expand its omnichannel advertising platform capabilities across retail media, paid search, and social. The investment supports Skai's evolution from search marketing specialist to comprehensive commerce media platform.

Amazon expanded Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), its clean room solution, to all advertisers globally, enabling privacy-safe analysis of advertising campaign performance across Amazon properties. AMC allows advertisers to analyze pseudonymized signals across Amazon's advertising and shopping data to optimize campaigns without accessing individual-level data.

Publicis Groupe acquired Profitero, a leading e-commerce analytics platform, to strengthen its retail media and commerce capabilities within Publicis Commerce. The acquisition provides Publicis clients with enhanced e-commerce insights and optimization tools across retail media networks.

Privacy-focused browser Brave launched Brave Search Ads, introducing search advertising that doesn't track users or build profiles. The ads are matched to search queries locally on the user's device, representing a new privacy-preserving approach to search advertising that challenges Google's model.

Snap announced plans to reduce its workforce by 20% and restructure its advertising business amid declining revenue growth and increased competition from TikTok. The restructuring included consolidating ad products and refocusing on direct response advertising and augmented reality ad formats.

IAB Tech Lab released the Global Privacy Platform (GPP) specification, creating a unified framework for managing user privacy preferences across different regional privacy regulations. GPP consolidates multiple consent frameworks (TCF, CCPA, etc.) into a single technical standard for the AdTech industry.

Snowflake launched Media Data Cloud, a specialized offering for advertising and media companies to manage, activate, and collaborate on data. The platform enables clean room capabilities, identity resolution, and data collaboration between advertisers, publishers, and platforms without moving data.

Walmart announced plans to acquire TV manufacturer Vizio for $2.3 billion to significantly expand its advertising capabilities through Vizio's SmartCast operating system and ad platform. The acquisition gives Walmart access to Vizio's 18 million active accounts and robust first-party viewership data, positioning the retailer to compete more aggressively in the connected TV advertising space.

AI search engine Perplexity announced the launch of its advertising program, introducing sponsored follow-up questions and paid media formats within its AI-generated answers. This represents the first major monetization effort for an AI-powered search platform, potentially signaling a new category of advertising inventory as AI search challenges traditional search engines.

Albertsons Companies launched Albertsons Media Collective, its unified retail media network spanning its portfolio of grocery banners including Safeway, Vons, and Jewel-Osco. The platform offers on-site, off-site, and in-store advertising capabilities powered by first-party purchase data from 35 million loyalty members.

Instacart went public on Nasdaq with advertising highlighted as a key growth driver, with its advertising business generating $740 million in revenue in 2022. The company's retail media platform, Instacart Ads, has become a crucial monetization channel, demonstrating the value of first-party commerce data in the AdTech ecosystem.

Yahoo acquired the technology and team behind Artifact, the AI-powered news aggregation app founded by Instagram co-founders. Yahoo plans to integrate Artifact's AI-driven personalization technology into its content platform to enhance user engagement and advertising targeting capabilities.

Snapchat introduced Sponsored Snaps, a new full-screen advertising format that appears in users' main Chat tab alongside messages from friends. This marks Snap's most aggressive advertising placement to date, inserting promotional content directly into the messaging experience to drive higher engagement and revenue.

Kroger announced plans to acquire Albertsons in a $24.6 billion deal that would combine two of the largest U.S. grocery chains and their respective retail media networks. The merger would create a retail media powerhouse combining Kroger Precision Marketing and Albertsons Media Collective, though the deal faces regulatory scrutiny.

Yahoo acquired Artifact, the AI-powered news aggregation app created by Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Yahoo plans to integrate Artifact's AI recommendation technology into its own platforms to enhance content personalization and advertising targeting capabilities.

TikTok unveiled TikTok Symphony, a comprehensive suite of AI-powered creative tools for advertisers including AI dubbing, AI avatars, and an AI video generator. The platform aims to help brands create localized, platform-native content at scale, addressing one of the key challenges in short-form video advertising.

Amazon's advertising business reached over $50 billion in annual revenue for 2023, making it the third-largest digital advertising platform globally behind Google and Meta. The milestone reflects Amazon's dominance in retail media and its expansion into streaming TV advertising through Prime Video and Freevee.

Yahoo and Taboola announced an exclusive 30-year partnership making Taboola the exclusive native advertising provider across Yahoo's digital properties. The partnership combines Yahoo's premium content inventory with Taboola's native advertising technology, creating one of the largest native advertising networks globally.

Disney announced Disney Select, its new programmatic advertising marketplace that provides automated access to premium inventory across Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and other Disney properties. The platform represents Disney's significant investment in programmatic infrastructure to capture more digital advertising dollars.

Roblox officially launched its Immersive Ads platform, allowing brands to place 3D advertising units within Roblox experiences. The platform includes Image Ads and Portal Ads that integrate into the virtual environments, representing one of the first scaled advertising solutions in the metaverse gaming space.