Data Scientist 2

GrowthLoop launches end-to-end Commerce Media Network stack. GrowthLoop Expands Commerce Media Stack GrowthLoop has expanded its commerce media offering with embedded integrations from The Trade Desk, Moloco and Audience Acuity, aiming to give retailers and commerce media operators a pre-integrated technology stack for audience creation, onsite and offsite activation, and closed-loop measurement. The new Commerce Media Network (CMN) solution is built around GrowthLoop's data cloud-native architecture, allowing teams to work directly within environments such as Google BigQuery, Snowflake and Databricks. The company says this approach reduces the need to copy customer data between systems while giving commerce media teams access to connected adtech capabilities through a single operating layer. The announcement comes as retailers increasingly look to turn first-party customer data into advertising revenue. According to GrowthLoop, citing Forrester, the retail media market is expected to exceed $300 billion by 2030. Yet many emerging commerce media networks still rely on separate systems for audience building, campaign activation and measurement, creating technical and operational friction as networks attempt to scale. GrowthLoop's approach is to address that fragmentation with composable infrastructure. Rather than requiring retailers to build and maintain individual integrations, the platform connects partner capabilities directly to the retailer's existing data cloud. Teams can also integrate their own DSPs, ad servers and data providers. The Trade Desk and Moloco integrations focus on activation. Commerce media operators can use audiences built from first-party data to support campaigns across owned properties and offsite environments, including the open internet. Audience Acuity adds demographic, behavioral and interest-based intelligence intended to help teams create more customized audience segments for advertisers. The model reflects an important shift in retail and commerce media technology. Early networks often developed around individual ad products or bespoke partnerships, while larger operators are increasingly looking for standardized infrastructure that can support multiple advertisers, channels and measurement requirements. Data cloud-native architectures are particularly relevant as retailers seek to maintain governance over their most valuable customer data. Closed-loop measurement is another central component. Campaign performance data can flow back into the retailer's data cloud through GrowthLoop, creating a more unified view of campaign outcomes. The goal is to help commerce media teams demonstrate advertiser ROI without relying on slow manual reporting or disconnected measurement workflows. GrowthLoop also highlighted Fanatics Advertising as an early user of several expanded capabilities. Fanatics is using the platform and its integrations to develop advertising opportunities based on its sports-focused customer data, illustrating how specialized retailers can build differentiated commerce media propositions around distinct first-party audiences. The competitive landscape remains crowded. Commerce media operators can choose from standalone data platforms, retail media infrastructure providers, DSP integrations and identity solutions, while established approaches often involve complex partnerships or LiveRamp-centered data connectivity. GrowthLoop is positioning its pre-integrated model as an alternative for enterprises seeking greater composability without moving customer data across fragmented technology systems. Market landscape. Commerce media is moving beyond basic onsite advertising toward a broader infrastructure model combining first-party data, offsite activation, audience intelligence and measurement. Retailers are under pressure to provide advertisers with sophisticated targeting and demonstrable outcomes while preserving data governance. This is increasing demand for interoperable technology stacks. Platforms that can connect data clouds with DSPs, activation channels and measurement systems may help commerce media teams move faster than traditional approaches requiring custom integrations for every capability. The Trade Desk, Moloco and other activation partners are also becoming increasingly important as retail media expands beyond a retailer's own digital properties and into the wider programmatic ecosystem. Strategic outlook. GrowthLoop's expansion signals that the next stage of commerce media competition may center on infrastructure efficiency as much as audience scale. The ability to build segments, activate campaigns and measure results without repeatedly moving data between platforms could become a significant differentiator for retailers scaling media businesses. For advertisers, more connected infrastructure could improve access to specialized first-party audiences across onsite and offsite channels. For commerce media operators, the challenge will be proving that greater technical integration translates into faster campaign execution, stronger advertiser outcomes and sustainable media revenue. Top insights. * GrowthLoop combines audience creation, adtech activation and closed-loop measurement into a data cloud-native commerce media platform designed to reduce fragmented CMN workflows. * Embedded integrations with The Trade Desk and Moloco connect retailer-built audiences with offsite activation, extending commerce media campaigns beyond owned digital properties. * Audience Acuity adds demographic, behavioral and interest-based intelligence, allowing commerce media teams to create more customized segments for increasingly specific advertiser requirements. * The platform operates within environments including Google BigQuery, Snowflake and Databricks, supporting data governance by reducing unnecessary copies and movement of customer information. * Fanatics Advertising is among the early adopters of the expanded capabilities, using connected commerce media infrastructure to build advertising opportunities around its sports audience data.

Moloco launches an agency partner program, in part to expand beyond mobile programmatic. As other DSPs move their business closer to clients, inadvertently or consciously avoiding agencies as middlemen, one is looking to recruit more agencies to its cause as it seeks to expand its client base, as well as help them get closer to delivering on outcomes. Although not exactly a pure DSP, performance ad-tech firm Moloco, which specializes in mobile advertising but is expanding beyond into CTV and other media realms, is launching an agency partner program that involves a handful of agencies at the outset, Digiday has learned. Among the media agencies Moloco is launching the program with are Dentsu UK & Ireland, PMG, M+C Saatchi Performance, SplitMetrics, RocketLab, Admiral Media, and others, totaling about a dozen. Sunil Rayan, Moloco's chief business officer, explained that the aim to get closer with media agencies is threefold: One, to educate them on how to talk about AI advertising and how it relates to outcomes; two, how performance marketing and AI overlap, mainly from an outcome metrics POV; and three, to scale more through partners. Rayan, who's an ex-McKinsey and Google exec, said some of the partner agencies, including PMG, helped to build out three pillars on which the agency partner program is based. "We actually worked with the partners to co-design it on what matters to them and what matters to us," he said. They include co-selling and pitching jointly; co-building the program; and sharing case studies that he said put the agency front and center. "It sets up these agencies to feel like they're core part of the of the value," added Rayan. One goal of Moloco in creating the program is to expand beyond the mobile and app-advertising space and into newer ad opportunities including CTV and streaming. That's in part where PMG came into play. Mary O'Brien, who heads programmatic at the independent media agency, explained that the agency has enjoyed "exponential growth" in working with Moloco's mobile programmatic operation. "We've had channels that have been just like lower-funnel performance drivers, like a Google or social platforms that do really well on some of those more app-based KPIs," said O'Brien. "But I think for programmatic we just hadn't quite unlocked what could drive really efficient returns. Moloco was a partner that we tested and just saw amazing success from." That success drove the agency to work with Moloco into expanding into the CTV space, she added. "CTV also being an app-based environment, there was this hypothesis that could we translate some of the performance we saw on mobile into the CTV ecosystem," said O'Brien. "So we were an alpha partner within Moloco's performance CTV product. And we've seen significant growth in some of the early tests we saw of that product. It's just been a overall like growth channel for our partnership." And where exactly does the AI part of it fit in? The core framework, as Rayan dubbed it, starts by filtering ad requests to sift out fraud, then looks to match the right audience. The next step applies an ad recommendation algorithm that seeks the highest probability to convert, sets a price level, and then bids. If accepted, the AI assesses the data for attribution ability to determine whether or not to bid again. Buy expanding into the performance CTV space, does the DSP plan to take more of a chunk out of the big boys of that space, be it The Trade Desk, Amazon or Google? Rayan sidestepped the question by pointing to what he believes Moloco does best. "There's always an optimal curve in every single platform, and we just tell customers, 'Okay, you figure out what's the best incremental dollar to spend over and above the wall gardens'," he said. "It could be sometimes in wall gardens, or sometimes outside of wall gardens. We believe the open app economy and open CTV economy has a lot of user retention, and it's an under monetized asset. So as a result, your incremental dollars will probably be better spent in platforms that can actually generate the value for you."

Kerry Flynn / Axios: Sources: marketing tech startup AppsFlyer raised a $1B Series E at a $2.7B post-money valuation; Moloco, Google, Meta, and Unity acquire minority stakes