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1. The Trade Desk (TTD) -- AWS, Albertsons and Netflix
a) AWS
Amazon’s AWS and The Trade Desk announced a new relationship to integrate UID2 -- the open internet anonymous identifier that it built -- into AWS’s data ecosystem. Now, AWS customers will be able to upload and organize their 1st party data through UID2 and into AWS to power more effective, granular and still private programmatic ad placements. Per Amazon, The Trade Desk’s integration meets any and all of its privacy standards by enabling open internet targeting absent of personally-identifiable data sharing.
“Many advertisers are using AWS to deploy their own data warehousing solutions and by being able to deploy UID2 through that system, it should make it seamless for them to utilize that ID.” — AWS Head of Data Collection and Interoperability Advertising Adam Solomon
b) Albertsons
The Trade Desk’s unique ability to connect omni-channel retail marketing dollars to direct, incremental sales via Solimar continues to gain rapid traction. This ability makes retailer impressions worth more to buyers that The Trade Desk represents and creates an environment where everyone is happier -- including consumers who get less ad-load via the relevancy upgrade. Retailers generate more marketing dollars while advertisers can still enjoy compelling returns and consumers get a better experience. What could be better than a win-win-win?
If Walmart, Walgreens and a handful of other retailer giants weren’t enough -- now it’s building a programmatic ad platform for Albertson’s Media Collective and its 2,275 U.S. locations. This is the first national grocer to strike up a relationship such as this one by offering a holistically accurate view of inventory, data and impression value. Pepsi, Mindshare and Unilever were among the first advertisers to tap into this new tool and all are praising the enhanced capabilities of the impression buying process vs. substitutes.
“Albertsons Media Collective and The Trade Desk are redefining what it means for advertisers to reach the right audience and measure their marketing campaigns.” — SVP of Retail Media at Albertsons Kristi Argyilan
c) Netflix
Netflix is reportedly exploring a working relationship with NBC (a close partner of The Trade Desk) and Google on building its advertising platform. No matter how the platform is constructed, it’ll have to source a large cohort of agencies and bidders to create value. Netflix will surely use The Trade Desk to do this as Co-Founder/CEO Jeff Green has told us.
Click here to read my TTD Deep Dive.
2. Meta Platforms (META) -- Creator Marketplace, DOJ, Piper Sandler & The Metaverse Standards Forum
a) Creator Marketplace and Meta Pay
Zuckerberg took to Facebook to announce new creator marketplace products throughout Facebook and Instagram. It’s currently split testing a dedicated creator marketplace on Instagram for better brand sponsor access and better creator monetization opportunities. As part of the announcement, Meta shared that it will not take any cut of creator revenue (paid events, subscriptions, badges etc.) until 2024. Zuck also included the following information:
- Creators can now plug subscribers from other platforms into subscriber groups within Meta’s ecosystem -- it calls this “interoperable subscriptions.”
- Facebook Stars -- its monetization tool for video and audio content -- is now available to all of its creators to assist earnings growth.
- Along those lines, the Reels Play Bonus program (to incentivize content and traffic creation) is expanding.
- It will soon allow Reels to be posted on Instagram and Facebook simultaneously.
- It’s also expanding its nascent testing within digital collectibles selling and trading:
Zuckerberg and Facebook are determined to carve a prominent niche within the Metaverse space poised to reach $5 trillion by 2030 per McKinsey. While I do view this as the next leg of growth, it’s a very long term leg. And with as hawkish as our monetary climate is, long term speculative bets on projects that some consider outlandish are not in vogue to say the least. That won’t change but neither will Meta’s ambition here.
In other Metaverse news, Meta is changing the name of its “Facebook Pay” digital wallet to “Meta Pay.” Aside from the name change -- according to Zuck -- this will be reconstructed to cater to virtual use cases within identity, ownership and transactions.
b) DOJ -- The Department of Justice and Meta Settlement
The Department of Justice and Meta settled an ongoing lawsuit pertaining to advertising and fair housing laws. Meta will update its advertising targeting algorithms (specifically “Special Ad Audience”) to remove what the DOJ saw as biases against protected classes.
c) Piper Sandler -- Mixed News
Piper Sandler is reporting that Facebook continues to see price-per-impression declines through May with the rate of decline remaining stubbornly high at 19% -- it has seen monthly declines every month in 2022. Conversely, Instagram saw this metric rise by 15% which was far faster growth than January-April. Overall, impression costs for Meta fell by 6% in May vs. 11% in April which hints at pain beginning to fade away as Meta’s ad-stack investments take hold, reels matures and industry e-commerce growth/macro hopefully improves into 2023. Piper Sandler also called out what we discussed last week as a key Meta positive: No tightening privacy news announced by Apple at WWDC.
I continue to think Meta will see its performance briskly improve as we enter the 2nd half of the year and into 2023. So many headwinds all hit the company at the same time and this is why I think the “Meta is dead” narrative is forming. I passionately reject this sentiment.
d) Metaverse Standards Forum
Tech giants, including Meta, formed the Metaverse Standards Forum to foster interoperability of the various metaverse projects happening in parallel and to create broad standards of behavior/development. Other members include Epic Games, Microsoft, Adobe, Nvidia, Qualcomm and many, many others. The Metaverse is a long term project that won’t meaningfully contribute to anything but operating expenses for years to come. Eventually, Zuckerberg sees this business as being even larger than the Family of Apps. We’ll see.
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3. Match Group (MTCH) -- Tssk Tssk Bumble
Bumble -- Match Group’s most formidable competitor -- released a fiery blog post this week throwing quite a bit of shade at Match. It accused Match of copying its product, intimidating Bumble (seriously?) and some poor behavior within its apps while trying to establish itself as the “kind” vendor in this concentrated field. I would mention that massive dating apps will inevitably deal with bad actors and Match (not just Bumble) has focused heavily on limiting these outcomes.
But that’s not the main point I wanted to make here. Companies don’t send out notes like this from positions of strength -- but weakness and insecurity. Perhaps Bumble should focus on Hinge quickly passing it as the 2nd most popular dating app globally rather than getting upset at losing to the competition. Match is eating their lunch -- Bumble can get mad about it or they can be better. It’s their choice and they seem to have made the wrong one. It’s not illegal for Tinder to emulate the female-first offering of Bumble, it’s a good business decision and something I as a shareholder applaud.
If Bumble were smart (and regulators allowed it), they would sell to Match Group in an instant. The synergies associated with combining Match’s 50%+ global market share with another successful app would be compelling to say the least, but Bumble won’t sell. Its founder came from Tinder and did not leave amicably. To her, this is clearly personal and if I were a Bumble shareholder that would concern me -- business is not personal. Match is a better company with a better team, Match boasts a more sustainable business model and this childish blog post indicates that in my admittedly biased view.
Click here to read my Match Group overview.
4. CrowdStrike (CRWD) -- Accolades
- Zywave and Advisen named CrowdStrike their Cyber Technology Provider of the year. No other next-gen vendor in endpoint security (or identity/network) received recognition.
- CrowdStrike was also named as one of India’s Great Mid-Size Workplaces for 2022. This is a key international market for CrowdStrike's future growth.