Two acquisitions announced Friday point to the next phase of ad tech consolidation. Taboola offered up to £27 million for Dianomi, gaining premium finance publishers, advertisers and high-intent audiences. Ad tech platform company Infillion agreed to acquire Foursquare, adding location intelligence to the shopper purchase data it obtained through Catalina.
The assets differ, but the strategy is similar: own the differentiated signals and relationships that make a broader platform more valuable. Taboola is adding specialized supply and demand. Infillion is acquiring proprietary location intelligence that strengthens its platform while creating a new data-sales business.
The deals may not be the last. Infillion, which acquired MediaMath’s assets among others, remains an “active acquirer,” founder and executive chairman Rob Emrich told Axios. Taboola CEO Adam Singolda wrote on LinkedIn: “stay tuned for more.”
Read:
- Taboola is buying a rival adtech company to gain a bigger foothold with lucrative finance clients (Sept. 18) – Business Insider
- Exclusive: Infillion acquires location data company Foursquare (Sept. 18) – Axios
PR:
- Taboola to Acquire Dianomi, Significantly Bolstering its Ability to Provide Performance Advertisers with… (Sept. 18) – Taboola
- Infillion to Acquire Foursquare, Closing the Loop Between Advertising and Real-World Results (Sept. 18) – Infillion
From tipsheet: Ad tech is full of aging point solutions whose assets may be worth more inside a broader platform than on their own.
MEASUREMENT
AppsFlyer maps ChatGPT attribution
AppsFlyer has provided its most detailed explanation yet of how its measurement infrastructure works with ChatGPT ads, expanding on an integration previously covered by tipsheet. The mobile measurement provider now places paid ChatGPT attribution inside a broader system that compares customers acquired through advertising with those arriving through organic AI answers.
AppsFlyer summarizes:
“AppsFlyer now attributes both: organic search attribution, expanded to cover AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), covers the earned side across 8 AI engines and 13 search engines, and ChatGPT Ads integration that covers the paid side.
On the paid side, AppsFlyer’s ChatGPT Ads integration attributes campaigns through OpenAI’s Conversions API…”
Read: “Introducing AEO Attribution & ChatGPT Ads: Measure Every Customer AI Is Sending You” (Sept. 16) – AppsFlyer
From tipsheet: The ChatGPT Ads integration was already known. What AppsFlyer is supplying here is a clearer view of the machinery underneath it and, more importantly, a way to compare paid conversions with demand ChatGPT generated organically. That distinction becomes essential as OpenAI optimizes campaigns toward conversions.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Sam’s Club turns membership data predictive
Sam’s Club Connect is extending its membership intelligence from measuring what shoppers bought to predicting what they may buy next. Its new Predictive Precision Targeting suite uses more than 400 intent signals to identify high-value prospects, anticipate churn and detect when members may be approaching a product upgrade or replacement window.
In a campaign for P&G’s Cascade Platinum Plus, Sam’s Club Connect targeted 800,000 households predicted to become new buyers, producing a 2.3x increase in marketing effectiveness. The model predicted that a targeted group would spend 71% more during the following 12 months than on its initial purchase. After 12 months, actual purchases showed that the prediction was 94% accurate, the company said.
Sam’s Club Connect VP and GM Harvey Ma added: “Predictive targeting and Omni-Impact represent a shift in how advertisers can plan and prove the value of their investment.” The expanded Omni-Impact combines attribution and media mix modeling across channels including in-club demonstrations, direct mail, Scan & Go ads and Meta, with AI-assisted recommendations for reallocating spending.
Read: “Turning Membership into Momentum” (Sept. 17) – Sam’s Club
From tipsheet: In July, tipsheet described membership as an intelligence system. Sam’s Club is now turning that intelligence forward: using observed behavior not only to measure advertising, but to predict acquisition value, churn and the member’s next purchase.
EVENTS
AI and ad tech in Europe
- DMEXCO is Wednesday and Thursday, September 23-24, in Cologne, Germany – DMEXCO
From tipsheet: Perhaps it’s no surprise considering its big funding announcement last week, GEO firm Profound is a main sponsor of the annual event.
AGENTS
Aperiam maps the platforms above platforms
Aperiam Ventures is proposing a new ad tech category called “Unified Media Platforms,” or UMPs: AI-native systems that sit above existing buying platforms and coordinate planning, execution, measurement and optimization across channels through proprietary APIs or AdCP.
Managing Partner Corey Ferengul wrote Friday on LinkedIn:
“UMPs directly address a major pain point: simultaneously managing numerous disconnected platforms to execute a single digital marketing plan is inherently inefficient…
By connecting directly to media supply via APIs or Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) and leveraging an integrated AI decision engine, UMPs seamlessly automate the end-to-end campaign lifecycle: planning, execution, measurement, and continuous optimization.”
Aperiam’s inaugural market map includes more than 20 companies, including companies in which Aperiam has invested, such as Adlyse, Scope3 and Newton Research. The proposed category spans walled gardens, LLMs, the open web, search, mobile and CTV.
Read more. (Sept. 18)
The map captures a real architectural shift: AI is creating a decisioning layer above DSPs and other channel-specific buying systems. If that layer controls budget allocation, optimization and measurement across channels, the underlying platforms risk becoming execution endpoints.
The “UMP” landscape:
“UMP” is still a thesis promoted by an investor with holdings in the category, not an industry-standard label, at least not yet.
On the Marketecture podcast, Ari Paparo and Aperiam’s Eric Franchi discussed the landscape with Ferengul. Paparo noted that Scope3 appears on the map and reminded listeners that the company is expected to make an announcement this week, following a mysterious late-August preview from CEO Brian O’Kelley.
Listen: “Episode 191: Corey Ferengul on the Newest Start-Up Category — UMPs” (Sept. 19) – Marketecture Podcast
More: “Unified Media Platforms: Who, What and Why?” – Aperiam Ventures
LLMs & CHATBOTS
eMarketer: AI, ads and the open web
At eMarketer’s Future of Digital Summit last week in New York City, principal analyst Nate Elliott offered another reason not to write off the traditional web.
The Current’s Ilyse Liffreing reports:
“AI currently accounts for only a small share of search activity. In fact, EMarketer data points to AI accounting for 2.9% of search currently. Elliott joked that ‘the majority of people will spend more time using the bathroom today than using AI,’ which got an audience chuckle. But he also predicted that the balance will change, saying that it’s ‘growing faster than any channel we’ve tracked so far.’”
Read: “AI runs on the open internet. So does consumers’ ultimate trust.” – The Current, owned by The Trade Desk
Three months ago, Elliott predicted that “ChatGPT and its peers will generate less than $1bn in US chatbot advertising in 2026, and just over $5bn in 2030.” That is far short of OpenAI’s reported projection of $100 billion in global ad revenue in 2030, although the forecasts cover different markets. Read on LinkedIn. (June)
Even after OpenAI said its ad business reached a $1 billion annualized rate by the end of August, Elliott’s much narrower forecast for U.S. chatbot advertising in 2026 could still prove correct.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
- Partnering with Accenture on embedded evaluation (Sept. 18) – Anthropic
- Anthropic’s IPO Will Happen a Month Later Than Expected (Sept. 18) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Raindrop Announces Series A and $50M in Total Funding Led by CRV to Protect the World from AI Agent Failures (Sept. 17) – press release
MEASUREMENT
More signals, please
- Insight to action: “DV Launches Ask Neura, Expanding Natural-Language Access to Media Intelligence” (Sept. 17) – press release
- Signals: “Attention Please: FreeWheel Offers New Signals to CTV Ad Buyers” (Sept. 17) – The Measure
- About marketers: “Marketers are media measurement’s biggest problem” (Sept. 2) – Consultant Angelina Eng on Martech
PEOPLE MOVES
Now hiring
- New CEO: “I promised to share what comes next and here it is: I’m joining Prodege as CEO on October 1, and excited about what we can build together… Across seven consumer brands, Prodege serves 125 million users that provide deep, trusted feedback. On this foundation, the team has built an extraordinary business in consumer research and commerce, connecting human perspective and participation to real business outcomes.” (Sept. 17) – Former Criteo CPO Todd Parsons on LinkedIn
- Meta builds in CTV: “After 8 years at FreeWheel… I’m starting a new chapter as Business Development Manager – Connected TV at Meta!” (Sept. 18) – Max Silverstein on LinkedIn
MORE
- SaaS speaks: “Marc Benioff Rejects SaaSpocalypse, Points to 72% Jump in AI Agents Built on Salesforce” (Sept. 18) – Adweek (subscription)
- Remedies: “Who wins and loses from the remedies to Google’s ad tech monopoly” (Sept. 18) – Digiday (subscription)
- Smart bidding: “Google ends its bid suppression era: What it means for your ROAS” (Sept. 17) – Smarter Ecommerce blog
- Courts: “OpenAI staff knew the ‘existential threat’ AI posed to publishers, New York Times claims” (Sept. 17) – Financial Times (subscription)
- Microsoft: “Information Quality Is What Wins In The AI Era” with Microsoft CVP Tim Frank (Sept. 16) – AdExchanger Talks podcast