Month: December 2018

Audio remained an exciting area for programmatic advertisers in 2018 as the medium moved further toward automation. The podcast industry began to mature this year as growing audiences garnered attention from radio broadcasters, streaming audio giants and big brands. But a lack of available audience data still hinders programmatic and measurement. Meanwhile, streaming audio and… Continue reading »

The post 2018: The Year Podcasts Grew Up And Programmatic Audio Took Off appeared first on AdExchanger.

After years of thriving under Beijing’s relatively light hand, China’s fast-growing technology sector is facing an unfamiliar situation: stepped-up government scrutiny.

Artificial intelligence hasn’t taken off in the mining sector, which spends less on research and development in general than do other industries such as oil and gas.

In one of the world’s most advanced drone-delivery tests, sunscreen and burritos arrived in minutes, as do complaints about the noise and mess.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com is revamping operations in what analysts said is a bid to calm investors about the company’s plunging stock price and heavy reliance on its founder, who won’t face sex-assault charges in the U.S.

2018 was a momentous year for the world of data and advertising. The implementation of GDPR created vast ripples that have obscure digital audiences and create new demand for addressable media. And even as ad tech companies embrace higher levels of transparency, every layer peeled reveals more auction tricks and data dealings, like bid caching… Continue reading »

The post The Top Data-Driven Advertising Stories And Trends Of 2018 appeared first on AdExchanger.

In 2018, digital media startups crashed and burned, unable to sustain their business models amidst changing social media algorithms, fickle readers and advertisers. Facebook’s fickleness sunk LittleThings and Mic, and contributed to layoffs at Upworthy. When the social network stopped reliably sending readers its way, those publishers couldn’t hang on. Mic first saw traffic from… Continue reading »

The post The Year Publishers Went Bust, Sold To Billionaires And Diversified appeared first on AdExchanger.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, president and partner at Goodway Group. As 2018 comes to a close, we’ve seen a number of positive trends giving ad tech more hope than ever moving into 2019, including… Continue reading »

The post The State Of Ad Tech Heading Into 2019 (In GIFs) appeared first on AdExchanger.

To Gene Munster, founder of Minneapolis-based venture capital firm Loup Ventures, an emerging Amazon-Walmart duopoly will continue to shape retail in 2019.

Over the past year, both retailers have fought it out for market share, with each trying to close the gap on their weaknesses relative to the other: Amazon is growing its physical footprint to compete against Walmart’s network of stores, while Walmart is investing in its delivery, pickup, cashier-less checkout, and growing its 1,100-plus brand online marketplace. It’s influenced a train of acquisitions, including, for example, Amazon’s Whole Foods land grab last year, which took place on the heels of Walmart’s DTC wave, buying Bonobos, Modcloth, Eloquii, and building its first online-only bedding brand this year, Allswell.

Munster spoke about the forces shaping retail over the next year, and how the duopoly will influence how new and emerging players develop strategies to reach more customers.

What are some of the major forces that will shape retail in 2019?
[Brick and mortar] will inch lower, but the big story is going to be more automation, faster delivery and more items. You can’t talk about retail without talking about Amazon and Walmart; in 2019, they’re going to be continuing what they started. In Walmart’s case, they’re probably going to be acquiring more brands — I can see them buying two to four of those brands. Amazon will continue opening more stores.

Last year, you predicted Amazon would buy Target in 2018. That didn’t happen, but you’re still bullish on the possibility of that happening in the future. How do you explain that?
We’re asking the question fresh again this year, and one of the reasons is how big brick and mortar retail is today. It’s still the vast majority [of retail]. All retailers are going to have to have significant brick and mortar presences; then for Amazon what they would need to have to be significant is many thousands of stores. With over 600 Whole Foods stores, it’s well behind where Walmart is at 8,000 to 9,000 stores internationally. [Target] is still the most logical player [for an Amazon acquisition] because it’s a broad retailer like Amazon. [It makes sense] when you look at the demographics, the number of stores that Target has, the types of products they’re selling, and if you look at what Target does well in, which is discovery. Amazon has not done a good job of that — old school merchandising. Merchandising is different than recommendations.

Are you willing to put a time span on when you think this will happen?
We’ve loosely put a 3-year time horizon on it.

In looking at delivery, supply chain and logistics, do you feel that the push towards last-mile delivery will be a boon for delivery startups like DoorDash and Deliv?
The likelihood that some those [delivery startups] become successful on their own over the longer term is low. Some of them will obviously be acquired — the easy example is Shipt [which Target acquired last year] — but they’re either going to be acquired or the bigger [retailers] will create logistics themselves. The logistics piece is critical, but their motivation to build it themselves or acquire it is a given. These third parties that go and help the long-tail retailer — it’s just not a very big market.

So, in tackling the last-mile problem, do you see the retailers wanting to ‘own’ that delivery experience by building these capabilities in-house?
By developing it in-house — we’ll see more of that in 2019 —  it’s an obvious stalking horse against existing players, so just by beefing that up it gives them negotiation power. As they’re doing that, they can experiment. These companies think about retail in terms of decades; when you put that lens on it, it makes it a little more obvious that they’re going to want to make the investment. That’s going to be the critical differentiator. A lot of this is lower tech, and more infrastructure, and that’s the piece that’s made Amazon so successful. This next phase of logistics is more heavy lifting than it is some new angle around tech.

What about marketplaces? In 2018, some third-party sellers expressed frustrations with Amazon’s marketplace. Meanwhile, Walmart positioned its marketplace as a seller-friendly alternative.
 Amazon [will be] adding more products themselves. That’s an increasing theme for them, trying to capture the most profitable [ways to grow sales] and try to come up with their brands around it. They want to try to build products themselves and brands themselves.

What does this mean for DTC merchants? Does this mean they should get off Amazon?
I don’t think they have a choice. They’re going to still want to be on there, but Amazon will be adding items faster.

The post VC Gene Munster: Expect Walmart to buy new brands appeared first on Digiday.

Hims’ minimalist packaging, bold serif lettering and casual tone of voice make it a millennial marketing dream. That modern branding gives the company’s wellness products the familiar not-your-parents’ feel of fellow digitally native brands. But under the hood, Hims, now a year old after launching last November, is a different company than the dime-a-dozen direct-to-consumer brands claiming to disrupt sleepy categories like socks and suitcases.

Hims’ products address problems that usually need a doctor’s prescription to treat, despite being highly common, including male pattern baldness, erectile dysfunction and acne. Customers only need to answer a few questions on the e-commerce site with a physician to receive prescription products, which rids the need to make an appointment, visit a doctor, get a prescription, have it filled and pick it up at a pharmacy.

Hims has raised $97 million in three rounds of funding in the past year. It has used that money to press into other areas. In October, the company introduced Hers for women, which offers birth control prescriptions and treatments for acne, hyperpigmentation, decreased sex drive and hair loss.

CEO and founder Andrew Dudum reflects on the company’s first year and shares his plans for building Hims into a multi-billion dollar business.

Hims is often lumped into the broader direct-to-consumer movement in retail. How do you see it?
While Hims looks like a DTC business, it’s unlike them in that we’re essentially giving men, and now women with Hers, access to licensed physicians in their state with a plethora of health products all on one platform. Most of these companies and brands focus on one single product and pave the way to make that product accessible. We do that across a category by simplifying healthcare. So we consider it a consumer healthcare brand, and it’s been an incredible year. In the first week, we did $1 million in sales, and that was our smallest week ever. It’s been rapidly growing since then.

We’re talked about in the [DTC] conversations though, because all the messaging that applies to traditional DTCs applies to us. We’re going directly to manufacturers, then packaging and branding ourselves, and selling products more affordably. But we’re also doing that for the health-care system. We’ve taken retail pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens out of the equation, which are expensive partners with expensive store locations. We’ve taken insurance plans out of the equation, which requires you to make visits and pay copays. We rip out those costs, and connect you to a licensed physician that can review you and in five minutes get you what you need. So to us, ‘DTC’ actually applies on a much bigger scale.

And the business looks a lot different than it did a year ago when it was considered a trendier Rogaine. What did the company roadmap look like from the outset?
The platform was built since the beginning to be a full health and wellness company. We want to be the single brand for men’s and women’s health that can consult you, so you can be proactive about healthcare. To complement that, we’ve also invested in education and content, so it’s a place you can come get advice and answers to questions people don’t always want to ask. We think what we’re building is a $10-20 billion company in the next few years, not a DTC brand that gets picked up by a big CPG company. That’s why we’re so excited. It’s limitless, as long as we can maintain the trust of customers and give them access to things they wouldn’t easily have access to otherwise.

What does a $10-20 billion business model look like today?
You have to take the access and affordability of launching products and brands, which has been revolutionized in the last couple of years in the space, and then use traditional, in-person assets and connections to build long-term trust. In a lot of ways, it’s never been easier to build a company, because you jump on a website, create a product and launch a Facebook ad campaign. But it’s never been harder to build a brand for those same reasons. When it’s easy to be viewed by millions, making something that can resonate is much, much harder. So you need to take the best of both worlds. It’s not enough to build a brand using just the last five years of DTC tactics, but it’s not enough to be a traditional retailer, either.

What it comes down to and what guides us is this: You need to build a really good company. But instead, you hear a lot of this: Raise a ton of money, spend it on marketing, get a bunch of customers and build really fast. I’m not convinced that that’s the best way to build a long-lasting business. So if you want to build a long-term brand, you have to have incredible financials very early. You need diversity in revenue and customer. And you need loyalty and love that could last for 20-plus years. A lot of brands being created could spend more time thinking about this stuff because the pump-and-dump of venture capital is not sustainable.

The post How Hims founder Andrew Dudum plans to build a $20 billion business appeared first on Digiday.