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

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.

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.

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.”

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.