Month: February 2024

Walmart’s rumored plan to acquire Vizio went from theoretical to reality this week, with the retail giant set to pay $2.3 billion for the smart TV manufacturer. The move will bolster Walmart’s retail media offering, Walmart Connect, adding streaming capabilities that will help it attract more brand marketing ad dollars. The deal will also allow Walmart to add to its existing data at a time when the rapid growth of retail media has made the space more competitive and Amazon continues its effort to get a bigger slice of the market.

Marketers and ad buyers see the Walmart-Vizio match-up as a way for the retailer to bridge the gap between brand and retail ad dollars as well as boost Walmart Connect’s distribution and scale by bringing it into new homes. Vizio collects data from 23 million opted-in devices, and 18 million of those are through SmartCast, the company’s smart TV operating system. The potential for Walmart Connect to enhance targeting and measurement capabilities by using Vizio’s ACR (automatic content recognition) data is appealing, according to buyers, but it’s unclear how the companies will combine data efforts or what will happen to Vizio’s existing partnerships. 

“Vizio has a ridiculous platform of information and Walmart has their ridiculous arsenal of information, meaning data, so marrying those things together, obviously gives some opportunity,” said Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at VML, adding that the growth of streaming viewership and the potential ad dollars makes it easy to see why Walmart would want to find a way into streaming, especially as Amazon has made headway there with advertisers recently. “They’re all doing it because advertising dollars are being handed out,” Kohl said.

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Pfizer has developed its own generative AI platform and named it after the pharmaceutical giant’s founder.

Since last year, Pfizer has been developing a new AI platform to help with content supply chains and while also overhauling the company’s entire marketing workbench. “Charlie,” named after Pfizer co-founder Charles Pfizer, is now in the process of rolling out to the entire organization. Executives say it’s still early, but the platform is now in use by Pfizer’s hundreds of people in central marketing team and thousands across the company’s various brands. It’s also being used by agency partners including Publicis Groupe and IPG.

A key focus for Charlie is improving the company’s content supply chain, according to Bill Worple, Pfizer’s vp of customer engagement platforms and technology. Along with helping with content creation and editing, Charlie also helps with fact-checking and legal reviews — something that’s especially important with highly regulated industries like pharma. Using a “red, yellow, green” risk system when labeling content, Charlie can identify assets the medical review team might want to spend more time looking over. For example, a headline used many times might not need as much attention. Other creative assets might use previously approved language but now appear in a new setting while other content making new claims deserves the most time.

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“It’s a literal takedown of doing something high-performance,” said Xanthe Wells, Pinterest VP of global creative, who built the its internal creative team, similar to the way she built Google’s.

Lady Gaga has entered the metaverse via Fortnite. The singer-songwriter and fashion icon has been asked to headline the second season of the metaverse gaming platform’s “Festival” chapter.

Pinterest’s first streaming show, “Deliciously Entertaining,” will further expand its roster of video content partnerships and explore in-app shopping capabilities.

Elon Musk told Twitter employees to take action that would have violated an FTC consent decree, but employees intervened and mitigated the privacy risks, according to the agency.

The biggest chipmaker in the US is hoping that generative AI—and US government concern about China’s tech ambitions—will revitalize its business.

Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” is a portrait of a meticulous Japanese man’s devotion to a life of simplicity — and toilet cleaning.

Esta historia fue reportada por primera vez en Modern Retail una publicación hermana de Digiday en Español.

Tras meses retocando el aspecto y el coste de sus productos, dos marcas de café “mejor para ti” están listas para sus primeros grandes lanzamientos al por menor en Estados Unidos.

Clevr, que fabrica mezclas de bebidas instantáneas de café con leche de origen vegetal, llevará esta semana cuatro de sus sabores más populares (Matcha, Chai, Café y Sleeptime) a 500 tiendas Target de Estados Unidos. Blume, una marca canadiense, llega esta semana a 90 tiendas Target de EE.UU. con cuatro cafés con leche vegetales en polvo (lavanda azul, caramelo salado, coco Matcha y cacao caliente Reishi). Ambas empresas venderán sus productos -que los clientes preparan mezclándolos con agua- también en Target.com.

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