Axios reports that mobile measurement firm AppsFlyer — which positions itself as “the measurement foundation your AI actually needs” — has reportedly raised over $1 billion in a Series E funding round on a $2.7 billion valuation.
The investor list includes Google, Meta, Unity and Moloco, suggesting that some of the industry’s largest AI-driven advertising platforms view independent measurement as strategically important.
The company says its SDK is embedded in more than 100,000 apps worldwide.
In an interview with Axios, AppsFlyer’s CEO and co-founder Oren Kaniel says about his new investors:
“They believe what we believe: that attribution and measurement must be independent, unbiased and trusted. As AI takes over more of how advertising gets bought and optimized, the signals feeding those systems become the most consequential infrastructure in the industry.”
Read: “AppsFlyer raises $1B from Moloco, Google, Meta and Unity” (June 22) – Axios
Meta VP of Ads Andrew Bocking said in the AppsFlyer press release: “Both advertisers and publishers need fair, unbiased, and comprehensive measurement to understand what works and to improve it. We support AppsFlyer’s mission to deliver this to the ecosystem.”
Read: AppsFlyer Announces Investments from Moloco, Google, Meta, and Unity to Advance Independent Ad Measurement for the AI Era (June 22) – AppsFlyer
Unity’s Chief AI Officer & SVP Product Technology Felix The said on LinkedIn:
“Unity is investing in AppsFlyer.
We sit at the intersection of developers, advertisers, and players, and see first-hand how much trust depends on neutral, independent measurement.
As AI becomes more deeply integrated into advertising and growth workflows, trusted measurement becomes even more critical. Better decisions that drive performance and growth require reliable, independent data that isn’t tied to any single platform’s perspective.
We are proud to support AppsFlyer’s continued innovation in this space and the broader effort to build a more transparent and effective ecosystem for the entire industry.”
Read more. (June 22)
From tipsheet: If AI is only as good as the signals it receives, measurement becomes critical infrastructure. This funding round suggests some of AppsFlyer’s largest customers would rather support a neutral measurement layer than risk seeing it controlled by a competitor.
Notably, no similar consortium emerged around LiveRamp before its sale to Publicis. Competitors, however, were quick to raise concerns about LiveRamp’s neutrality after the deal was announced.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Getty Images signs a licensing deal with OpenAI, letting its image library appear in ChatGPT’s search and discovery tools (June 22) – Bloomberg (subscription)
- Daybreak: Tools for securing every organization in the world (June 22) – OpenAI
- No Claude Fable 5? No problem: Sakana achieves frontier performance with new Fugu multi-model, auto synthesis system (June 22) – VentureBeat
COMMERCE MEDIA
Walmart’s commerce media strategy
Walmart kicked off Cannes Lions with a strategic announcement titled, “Walmart Sets the Vision for the Next Era of Global Commerce Media.”
Walmart’s vision centers on three areas:
- Unifying Walmart Connect globally
- Expanding from a retail media network to a commerce media platform
- Integrating advertising, shopping, content and measurement across Walmart’s ecosystem
In the release, Walmart Chief Growth Officer Seth Dallaire emphasized the company’s commerce media footprint, “Walmart has a unique advantage because we interact with customers everywhere: in stores and clubs, online, through membership, across marketplaces and increasingly through connected media experiences.”
Read:
- Walmart Sets the Vision for the Next Era of Global Commerce Media (June 22) – Walmart
- Walmart Pulls Sam’s Club Deeper Into Its Ad Business (June 22) – Adweek (subscription)
Meanwhile, Rich Lehrfeld, SVP, International and Sam’s Club Connect at Walmart, emphasized the company’s focus on signals: “As advertisers look for greater accountability, faster insights, and measurable growth, we’re building a more connected commerce media ecosystem powered by Walmart’s combination of scale, solutions, and signals.”
Read more on LinkedIn. (June 22)
From tipsheet: Walmart is positioning itself less as a retail media network and more as a commerce media platform spanning advertising, shopping signals, content and transactions. As AI assistants become a new layer between consumers and purchase decisions, Walmart appears to be betting that commerce media will extend beyond retailer-owned inventory and into the broader shopping journey.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Signal: Amazon buying ChatGPT ads
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“Amazon is buying ads on ChatGPT. I started seeing Amazon ads on Sunday.” (June 22) – Entrepreneur Joe Kaziukėnas on LinkedIn
From tipsheet: Recommendation has always been a distribution channel. What’s changing is that recommendation systems are becoming decision systems.
Amazon advertising on ChatGPT suggests the company wants to be closer to consumer decision-making.
AGENTS
PubMatic tests agentic ads
PubMatic and Level Agency released results from a controlled test comparing PubMatic’s AgenticOS against an incumbent DSP for an education advertiser.
According to a press release, AgenticOS provided:
“More than 2x more reach per dollar on qualified audiences, across mobile, online video, and premium CTV – 351 qualified impressions delivered for every $1, compared to the DSP’s 164
53% lower weighted average CPMs for premium CTV inventory
54% higher video completion rate overall; 35% higher on a controlled OTT-to-OTT comparison
Retargeting at scale within days, versus the 30-60 day ramp typically required by DSP-led campaigns
Campaign activated in minutes, from audience discovery to tactics and budgets, compared to the typical 3–5 hour setup plus creative trafficking”
Read: “Level Agency Tests AgenticOS Against Its Incumbent DSP, Doubles Reach Per Dollar” (June 22) – PubMatic
From tipsheet: The interesting question is not whether AgenticOS beat one DSP in one test. It’s whether intelligence is starting to move closer to supply. PubMatic is betting that agentic systems can operate directly on publisher-side signals, inventory and infrastructure rather than sitting exclusively inside a DSP.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Amazon extends shopping prompts to open web
From a press release yesterday, Amazon began with REC:
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“Responsive eCommerce Creative (REC) is Amazon’s automated display advertising solution for brands selling products on Amazon. The premise is simple: provide the products you want to advertise, and Amazon handles everything else. The system automatically creates, resizes, and delivers display ads across Amazon-owned properties—including the Amazon shopping app, Fire TV, and Alexa devices—as well as thousands of third-party websites and apps.”
Amazon then added the conversational element:
- “As part of its optimization capabilities, REC can automatically generate Sponsored Products prompts using details from product detail pages and deliver them across the open internet.”
- “Prompts recently launched on Amazon.com, surfacing AI-generated questions in shopping results and on product detail pages. Beginning in July, we are expanding these prompts beyond Amazon for the first time through REC display ads.”
Read: The new creative advantage: Tools that easily scale, optimize, and drive creative performance (June 22) – Amazon Ads
From tipsheet: Amazon is extending its conversational shopping experience beyond Amazon-owned surfaces. AI-generated shopping prompts began as a way to help consumers evaluate products within Amazon search results and product pages. By bringing those prompts to display ads across the open web, Amazon is testing whether product discovery, evaluation and recommendation can happen before consumers ever reach a marketplace.
More: “Amazon Pushes Conversational AI Ads Onto the Open Internet” (June 22) – Adweek
LLMs & CHATBOTS
OpenAI, ChatGPT ads debut at Cannes
- OpenAI reveals more of its ChatGPT ads playbook (June 22) – Ad Age (subscription)
- “Today’s conversation with OpenAI’s David Dugan and Adweek’s Kendra Barnett reinforced that AI is becoming a new front door for commerce.(…) More than 80% of ad-driven ChatGPT Ads traffic comes from new customers, highlighting the platform’s growing role as a discovery engine and a source of incremental reach for advertisers.” (June 22) – Michael Komasinski, CEO, Criteo on LinkedIn
- Cannes Ad Festival Puts OpenAI’s Projections in Spotlight (June 22) – The Information (subscription)
- OpenAI pitches ChatGPT ads to Cannes marketers ahead of IPO (June 23) – Financial Times
COMMERCE MEDIA
Shopify assembles a commerce graph
On last week’s Mobile Dev Memo podcast with analyst Eric Seufert, Shopify Director of Product Venkat Prabhu described how the company’s new Campaign Autopilot product uses Shopify commerce data to help merchants manage marketing across channels including Meta, Shop Campaigns and messaging.
“When merchants opt in and contribute to a pooled data set, that pooled data allows everyone in the network to become better. (…) [It enables] better identity resolution and machine learning models that help predict which customers are most likely to buy a particular brand or product.”
Prabhu argued that Shopify’s visibility into transactions, attribution and customer value across merchants stems from its role as the operating system for merchants. He also highlighted the company’s expansion of Shop Campaigns into ChatGPT, Pinterest and the open web.
Separately, Shopify’s Spring ’26 Edition connected Shopify Catalog to Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), allowing developers and AI agents to discover, recommend and transact on products across Shopify merchants.
Podcast: Shopify as a marketing operating system (with Venkat Prabhu) (June 18) – Mobile Dev Memo
More:
- Introducing Campaign Autopilot: AI-powered Marketing Built into Shopify (June 17) – Shopify blog
- Selling everything, everywhere, all at once: The Spring ’26 Edition (June 17) – Shopify
From tipsheet: Shopify increasingly looks like more than an ecommerce platform. As it connects product catalogs, shopper identity, transactions, attribution and advertising across merchants, Shopify appears to be assembling a commerce graph. Campaign Autopilot suggests Shopify intends to use that graph as a growth engine for merchants.
Related: Pacvue Launches Pacvue Prism, Powering the Industry’s First Agentic Commerce Grid (June 22) – Pacvue
MORE
- “New Forrester and 4A’s research finds that Google is now the preferred AI partner among US marketing agencies, surpassing OpenAI, Adobe, Microsoft, and Anthropic.” (June 22) – Jay Pattisall, VP, analyst, Forrester on LinkedIn
- Uber Advertising: Transforming Movement into Brand Momentum with a Unified Commerce Media Solution (June 22) – Uber
- Omnicom Media kicks off a series of partnerships at Cannes Lions with a first-time Netflix deal (June 22) – Digiday (subscription)
- Accenture Song launches AI-native measurement platform (June 22) – Arun Kumar, Global Head of Data and AI, Accenture Song on LinkedIn
- Dentsu and LightboxTV automate linear TV buying in industry first (June 22) – Dentsu