Kroger’s latest data play and NFL+’s linear TV advertising: Datacenter Weekly

Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals. Kroger opens a data marketplace for CTV and streaming ads “Kroger Precision Marketing is expanding its private programmatic marketplace to include video and connected TV inventory, fueling a convergence of three dominant media trends—CTV, programmatic buying and retail media,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports. The details: “With the expansion, which recently went live with packaged goods brands and agencies, advertisers can use sales data from the largest supermarket retailer loyalty program—with around 60 million households—to reach targeted households via premium inventory suppliers that include Magnite, OpenX, PubMatic and Xandr,” Neff adds. Essential context: “The move comes as advertiser interest—particularly CPG advertiser interest—in CTV is growing quickly, along with a recent explosion in retail media offerings and the availability of retail purchase data to target and measure the effectiveness of ads,” Neff notes.Keep reading here. See all of Ad Age's 2023 Agency A-List winners here Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell • “Jobless claims fall for 5th straight week to lowest level since May,” per the Associated Press (via the New York Post). • “New Inflation Developments Are Rattling Markets and Economists. Here’s Why,” from The New York Times. • “Retail Sales Rise but Economists Debate Consumers’ Resilience Amid High Inflation,” per Barron’s.Don’t miss: “Layoffs and budget cuts—tracking economic moves and news,” Ad Age’s continually updated blog covering how the marketing industry is bracing for a recession. Twitter’s data handling comes under fire “Twitter’s security lapses were so grave that they threatened national security, the company’s former head of security-turned-whistle-blower told senators on Tuesday,” Bloomberg News reports (via Ad Age). “Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Peiter Zatko, also known by his hacker name ‘Mudge,’ said Twitter was a decade behind necessary security upgrades, which he described as a ‘ticking bomb of security vulnerabilities.’” The gist: “Twitter’s unsafe handling of the data of its users and its inability or unwillingness to truthfully represent issues to its board of directors and regulators have created real risk to tens of millions of Americans, the American democratic process and America’s national security,” Zatko said in the hearing. Essential context: Zatko “was fired in January 2022 over what the company said were performance shortcomings,” per Bloomberg. “His claims come as Twitter prepares to go to court to force Tesla CEO Elon Musk to complete a $44 billion deal to buy the company. Zatko’s allegations, especially about the prevalence of automated accounts known as bots, are likely to feature prominently in the Oct. 17 trial in a Delaware court.” Keep reading here. NFL+ takes to linear TV How do you get people to watch your new streaming service? Advertise on old-fashioned TV, of course. According to new data shared exclusively with Datacenter Weekly by TV advertising analytics firm iSpot.tv, NFL+, which launched on July 25, now accounts for 2% of TV ad impressions in the streaming-service category of advertisers across linear broadcast and cable TV. That puts it at No. 14—right between Amazon’s Freevee (which accounts for 2.3% of ad impressions) and TelevisaUnivision’s ViX (at 1.95%). Incidentally, ViX is also pretty new—it launched on March 31—and Freevee is actually a rebrand; the service was known as IMDb TV until April 28. For context, Disney+ is the biggest streaming player advertising on linear broadcast and cable—accounting for 16.66% of all TV ad impressions in the streaming-service category.Read more about streamers: Disney+ reveals ad-tier pricing GM to deploy NBCU data solution “General Motors will be the first brand marketer to integrate with NBCUnified, the first-party data and identity platform of NBCUniversal’s network of TV, streaming and digital properties,” Ad Age’s Jack Neff reports. The details: “The integration will allow for privacy-compliant, anonymized matching of GM’s first-party database and custom audiences of car buyers at various stages in the decision-making process with NBCU’s first-party data and custom audiences,” Neff writes. “The tie-up was made possible through GM’s media agency, Dentsu’s Carat, which was the first agency to link with NBCUnified earlier this year.” Essential context: “Only 2% of the U.S. population is in market for a vehicle at any one time, and that’s including used cars,” said Heather Stewart, general director of global media and marketing services for GM. Neff notes that using NBCUnified “will help GM target ads to that 2% that are focused on immediate sales, while focusing other ads on people higher up in the purchase funnel.” Keep reading here. Fox’s local stations deploy Comscore currency solution “Fox Television Stations (FTS), the network’s broadcaster of local stations, will use a Comscore currency for dealmaking,” Ad Age’s Parker Herren reports. “Leveraging the Comscore Advanced Audiences platform, media partners will be able to transact across FTS’s entire footprint using Comscore’s demographic and consumer behavior datasets.” Essential context: “By partnering with Comscore for local TV measurement, FTS can now use significantly larger data sets and even more precision to ensure that linear advertisers are strategically paired with their consumers,” said Tom Fleming, senior VP of station sales for FTS, in a statement. Herren’s report appears in Ad Age’s new blog titled “Media measurement uncertainty—tracking TV, social and digital.” Just briefly • “TikTok won’t commit to stopping US data flows to China,” per CNN. • “New Data Show Broad Shift to Remote Work During Pandemic,” from The Wall Street Journal. • “Bloomberg launches database targeting racial economic divide,” per The Hill. • “Customs officials have copied Americans’ phone data at massive scale,” The Washington Post reports. Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022 In his introduction to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022 report, Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson reports that advertisers scored “the second-biggest spending gain on record” in 2021, marking “an extraordinary turnaround from the pandemic plunge in 2020. Spending has continued to grow in 2022, though budgets could come under pressure as marketers grapple with inflation, rising interest rates and slumping consumer confidence amid escalating expectations of a recession.” There’s a lot to LNA 2022—so the Datacenter team has come up with multiple entry points for you to make your own deep dive. To wit: • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—10 most-advertised brands in the U.S., ranked” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Will ad spending rise in the (coming) recession? It’s happened before” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—25 biggest U.S. advertisers, ranked” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—U.S. market leaders and category rankings” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Big spending gains and cuts” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—What comes next after 2021's ad spending surge” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Ad spending by medium, category and advertiser” The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter. Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee. This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco. Become an All Access subscriber Get access to exclusive resources including Leading National Advertisers, World’s Largest Advertisers, Agency Report, Agency Review Tracker and TV Pricing Report. Click here

Kroger’s latest data play and NFL+’s linear TV advertising: Datacenter Weekly

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