Street Fight Daily: Media Buyers Weigh in on Facebook’s Data Changes, A New Era for Uber?

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology…

Agencies: Facebook’s Removal of Third-Party Data Turns Back the Clock on Targeting (AdExchanger)
Marketers using segments from third-party data brokers will have to obtain those segments directly from providers and upload them through Custom Audiences—which is both more tedious and expensive. Marketers without quality first-party data could see performance on Facebook decline as a result. Vox: A one-on-one with Zuckerberg

The Biggest Roadblocks to Building a Top Loyalty Program (Street Fight)
Dan Slavin: To build a successful loyalty program, make sure that customers can see what points and rewards they’ve earned without making them jump through hoops. Make your system as transparent and frictionless as possible, and try to communicate via each member’s preferred channel.

A Deep Dive on the Challenges Facing New Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (New Yorker)
On a recent morning, a white S.U.V. pulled up in front of the Gurugram building housing the largest Indian office of the ride-hailing company Uber, and out climbed Dara Khosrowshahi, the company’s new C.E.O.

As Amazon Preps Attribution Tool, Media Buyers Demand Greater ROI (Street Fight)
Amazon’s massive consumer audience and billions of touch points, coupled with its newly acquired brick-and-mortar presence, means the company’s ad services could be in a position to explode if it does a good enough job illustrating the influence its ad services have on driving online-to-offline or strictly online sales.

Paid Search, Shopping Campaign Media Buys Continue to Rise (MediaPost)
Kenshoo estimates about 10% year-on-year growth in search overall, similar to the rate of growth seen in the past four to five quarters, and Merkle expects Google’s paid search to increase about 20% YoY compared with 23% in the fourth quarter of 2017.

As ads.txt Adoption Grows, So Too Does Enforcement (Digiday)
With a majority of top publishers having adopted ads.txt, “now most of our leading DSPs can allow us to only buy from ads.txt publishers. That means the scale is there,” said Nichola Perrigo, VP and director of digital media at RPA. And it means more enforcement is coming.

Retailers Race to Automate Stores (NYT)
A global race to automate stores is underway among several of the world’s top retailers and small tech start-ups, which are motivated to shave labor costs and minimize shoppers’ frustrations, like waiting for cashiers. 

How Spotify’s Unusual First Day of Trading Will Play Out (WSJ)
Investors in Spotify Technology SA could be in for a turbulent Tuesday as the company uses an unorthodox maneuver to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, without many of the protections built into a standard initial public offering.

LBMA Podcast: Google’s Just A Line, Walmart & Handy, Snapchat (Street Fight)
Also on the show this week: Drive Time Metrics, VisuWall, the Church of England, Macy’s, Home Depot + Pinterest, Philips Lighting.