Adtech provider Criteo has acquired Australian firm Brandcrush, expanding its media offerings to in-store ad inventory by providing a platform for automating various aspects of buying, selling, booking, placing, measuring and reporting on multimedia ad placements in physical locations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Department of Justice is again suing Google for alleged antitrust practices, this time over its dominance in ad technology, with the DOJ making the case that its market dominance over both the buy and sell side of the equation effectively muscles out competitors.
Google parent Alphabet is reportedly considering splitting up parts of its business that handle digital advertising into a separate unit, to avoid antitrust litigation from the U.S. Justice Dept. as part of an ongoing investigation, according to the WSJ. It’s not clear whether anything short of an asset sale would satisfy federal regulators.
Data-driven, real-time marketing is a thing of beauty for retailers – but sometimes the technology can be too smart for its own good, as happened to Sears.