Month: September 2024

As tech companies integrate large language models into various search platforms, a pair of Pinterest veterans hope their startup’s new integration with Salesforce will improve AI-powered search for e-commerce.

Vantage Discovery, a generative AI-powered SaaS platform, has built a new app built atop Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud to provide semantic search on retailers’ websites. Using AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, companies can use Vantage Discovery’s API to better understand user queries beyond just keywords. Indexing information from a retailer’s own website also lets Vantage enable companies to give shoppers more personalized recommendations.

“How people handle that today is [by using] a very separate machine-learning stack for the retrieval layer,” co-founder Nigel Daley told Digiday. “And most of the retrieval layers are kind of fairly dumbed down. They’ll try to bring up as many products as they can back and they think will [be of interest], but they kind of cast a wide net. Problem is, the wider the net, the more it costs.”

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For nearly the past decade, Brittany Bright has been reviewing influencer and content creator contracts, ushering them through the negotiation process with brands.

For the most part, clauses around content have stayed the same around election cycles, according to Bright, founder of The Influencer League, a digital platform specializing in influencer education and management. For example, brands have required contracted influencers and creators to honor a quiet period around campaign work, limiting content that is deemed political or unaligned with the brand.

However, as the U.S. election season looms this year, brands are more adamant than ever about working with apolitical influencers to ensure brand safety, she said. “This is actually the first time that I’ve seen some brands double down as much as they have,” Bright said.

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It may not be the only one in the marketing landscape, but there’s a power struggle happening in the world of commerce media. It’s a tale as old as Amazon itself — and for the record, Amazon is 30 years old.

Last week’s news that agency holding company Publicis Groupe was acquiring Mars United Commerce was just the latest maneuver to gain a better foothold for agencies and their brand clients. It’s a move that’s meant to cement Publicis as the dominant agent in the world of connected commerce. 

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It can be tough growing a company in a competitive landscape — especially if you don’t know what to prioritize to get there.

Earlier this month, Will Anderson, former vp of growth at performance marketing agency Journey Further, founded and launched performance marketing consultancy Growth Society to change the way brands strategize for growth. Led by a team of five advisors (including himself and a former marketing director at Gymshark), the consultancy aims to differentiate itself from the agency approach — by focusing on digital strategies and testing new channels through a flexible team of around 30 freelancers combined with core specialists (rather than being fully staffed in-house).

After starting two e-commerce businesses and leading recruiting and business development at Journey Further, Anderson said he can relate to brands trying to grow and sustain themselves in a crowded marketplace. He contends that by streamlining processes like the pitching experience, or recruiting the right people with flexible contracts, brands can focus resources where it matters most to grow – whether that is in hiring personnel, client services or revenue generation.

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The U.S. Department of Justice has rested its antitrust case against Google’s display advertising business, alleging that it monopolized key digital advertising technologies through a series of anticompetitive practices. 

It argues that over the past 15 years, Google has systematically acquired competitors, manipulated ad auctions, and used its dominance in various parts of the ad tech ecosystem to stifle competition. 

According to the DOJ, these actions have allowed Google to maintain its dominance in the digital advertising market, inflate ad costs, reduce revenue for publishers, and stifle innovation and competition, ultimately harming consumers and the broader digital ecosystem.

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At TwitchCon on Sunday, Sept. 22, the livestreaming services provider StreamElements announced a new “side sponsorship” tool intended to help online creators work with multiple brands simultaneously. 

Since 2016, StreamElements has provided tools and services to help connect livestreamers with brands and potential advertisers. At the moment, the company works with about 20 million creators across Twitch, YouTube, TikTok and other platforms, and currently represents roughly 90 percent of all sponsored content on Twitch, according to StreamElements CEO Or Perry.

StreamElements’ business model is built around performance marketing, meaning participating streamers receive a unique product link to share with their communities, with each click counting toward the creator’s performance goals. StreamElements, and the creator, only get paid when an actual conversion takes place. StreamElements demonstrated the tool to creators at TwitchCon, but has not yet set an official launch date for it.

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This story was originally published on sister site, Modern Retail.

On Thursday, former Nike employees rushed to social media and group chats to share their reaction to the news that the sneaker giant’s CEO, John Donahoe, was stepping down in October after a rocky tenure. To replace him, Nike is bringing back Elliott Hill, a retired Nike veteran. 

The reaction from former Nike employees was almost universally positive, with many believing that Hill can help Nike get some of its swagger back. “Apparently, there was an audible cheer on Nike campus when the news [was] announced,” said one former employee, speaking under the condition of anonymity. 

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Hasan Minhaj didn’t necessarily plan to add investor to his already burgeoning resume. Instead, the opportunity presented itself in a cup of smooth, spicy chai. Nine months after his first sip of the Kolkata Chai Co.’s signature blend, the Daily Show alumni has gone from a devoted customer to the brand’s second-largest stakeholder and business…