Steven's Newsletter - June 23rd, 2025

News you may have missed last week, info to make you smarter and games

Hi all,

We still have a few spots open for our Summer 2025 CTV Essentials cohort. Let me know if you’re interested in joining. As always, we offer a few complimentary seats for those currently between jobs.

Thanks,

Steven

🧩 Connections:

📰 News:

Amazon is enhancing its live shopping platform by allowing advertisers access to Amazon Live signals in Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC). This enables marketers to see impressions, views, and clicks from livestreams, helping them understand how creator-led streams drive sales and impact campaign performance. Brands like GE Appliances have already tested these live signals, observing a 2.5-times higher purchase rate for shoppers who viewed Amazon Live compared to those who only saw standard ads. This move signifies Amazon's commitment to providing advertisers with integrated data tools to optimize creator partnerships and content strategies. (Adweek: Amazon Advertisers Can Now Measure How Livestreamed Broadcasts Drive Sales)

Universal Ads has launched its TV Business Partner Program to assist brands new to television advertising. This program offers tools for building, testing, and launching TV commercials, connecting campaigns to measurable business outcomes. It provides access to high-impact creative and measurement partners, enabling advertisers to easily transition from social media to TV advertising. Launch partners include Canva, Fairing, and Measured, providing support for creative development and access to programming from major publishers like NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. (Adweek: Universal Ads Introduces First-of-Its-Kind TV Business Partner Program)

Dick's Media, the retail media arm of Dick's Sporting Goods, has partnered with Roku to give advertisers access to sports fans via connected TV. This collaboration utilizes Roku Data Cloud to combine Dick's 45 million loyalty program members with Roku's 125 million daily users. This is the first time a retail media network has partnered with Roku's data cloud offering, allowing advertisers to reach a majority of Dick's customers directly through CTV ads. Testing showed a 300% increase in return on ad spend when Dick's Media used its first-party data on Roku compared to traditional models. (Adweek: Dick's Sporting Goods Combines Data With Roku in New Retail Media Play)

Disney Advertising has partnered with Amazon, integrating Amazon's demand-side platform (DSP) into Disney’s Real-Time Ad Exchange (DRAX). This makes Amazon the third DSP, after Google and The Trade Desk, to access DRAX inventory across properties like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu. The collaboration allows advertisers to leverage insights from both companies, combining Disney’s audience data with Amazon Ads’ browsing, streaming, and purchase insights. This aims to break down traditional barriers between content and commerce signals, offering curated deal packages and becoming available to all Amazon DSP advertisers in Q3 2025. (Digiday: Disney adds Amazon to its DRAX partnership roster)

Index Exchange, through its IX Labs arm, has formed a decade-long investment and collaboration partnership with FirstPartyCapital. This pact aligns with FirstPartyCapital's Fund 2, which targets £50 million for early-stage ad tech and martech firms expanding internationally. Index Exchange will offer infrastructure services and deeper platform integration to companies within the fund's portfolio, such as Bedrock and LightboxTV. This move reflects Index Exchange's intent to evolve and foster value creation on the sell-side of the ad tech industry, aiming to become the platform of choice for these companies. (Digiday: Inside Index Exchange's multimillion-dollar start-up investment pact with FirstPartyCapital)

National CineMedia (NCM) and iSpot are expanding their partnership to provide the first-ever scaled, third-party measurement of in-theater ads. This collaboration integrates NCM’s household-level exposure data with iSpot’s cross-platform and outcomes-based measurement solutions. The goal is to give advertisers clear insights into how cinema ads perform, including reach, frequency, and conversion data, linking them to real-world business outcomes like sales. This development helps position cinema as a measurable channel alongside linear TV, streaming, and digital, adding credibility and reducing uncertainty around its ROI. (AdTechRadar: iSpot and NCM Partner to Track Theater Ad Performance)

Albertsons, a major grocer, has partnered with STRATACACHE to introduce digital display advertising into its brick-and-mortar stores. This collaboration will power a new in-store advertising solution through a fleet of digital screens, promoting product discovery and creating media offerings for brand partners. Mondelez is one of the brands expected to run campaigns, recognizing the value of reaching customers at the point of purchase. In-store retail media represents a significant opportunity, with projections of spending surpassing $1 billion by 2028. (AdTechRadar: Albertsons to Launch In-Store Digital Ads)

WhatsApp, owned by Meta and boasting over two billion global users, will begin showing ads in its app for the first time. Targeting for these ads could be based on location, default language, and other Meta-collected data if users link their accounts. This marks a notable strategy reversal for Meta, which previously monetized WhatsApp as an ad-free messaging service by charging businesses to send users to their WhatsApp accounts. Additionally, WhatsApp now allows live video broadcasters to show ads on their streams, adding another revenue stream for Meta. (AdExchanger: The Worst Of The Corner Offices; What’s Up With Ads On WhatsApp?)

Netflix is expanding its global programmatic advertising offering by partnering with Yahoo DSP. This integration allows advertisers to programmatically buy Netflix ads, providing access to highly engaged audiences in a brand-safe environment. Yahoo's DSP joins The Trade Desk, Google, and Microsoft as Netflix's programmatic partners, making it easier for advertisers to incorporate Netflix into their broader CTV strategies. Netflix also announced an expansion of its targeting capabilities, now offering over 100 interest categories, and plans to expand its in-house ad platform, Netflix Ads Suite, in the coming months. (Adweek: Netflix Expands Ad Buying Access Through Yahoo DSP)