Walmart takes aim at Amazon with a new measurement tool for advertisers

Hi! Welcome to the Advertising Insider daily for July 30. I'm Lauren Johnson, a senior advertising reporter at Business Insider. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every weekday. Send me feedback or tips at ljohnson@businessinsider.com

Today: Walmart's new weapon against Amazon, the big four tech firm CEOs testify about antitrust concerns, and Snap's power players.

Walmart is pushing harder into advertising with a new tool that shows if people buy a product after seeing an ad for it

• Walmart is steadily building an internal advertising business to rival Amazon and is launching a measurement tool that tracks sales after someone sees an ad.
• Jeff Clark, VP of product and product marketing at Walmart Media Group, told me that the new tool is Walmart's first step in building an ad manager akin to the software that advertisers use to buy ads on Amazon, Facebook, and Google.
• He also said that the number of advertisers who have participated in Walmart's eight-month-old advertising API has increased by fivefold but did not say how many total advertisers are in the program.

Read the full story here.

Lawmakers question the CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon

• The CEOs of Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon testified in front of the US House of Representatives' Antitrust Subcommittee yesterday over concerns that the tech companies hold too much control.
• The executives pushed back on the antitrust concerns: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said that for every $1 spent on US advertising, Facebook makes 10 cents; Tim Cook from Apple said that its app store is a fair playing field for all developers; Amazon's Jeff Bezos said that its marketplace does not crush third-party sellers; and Alphabet's Sundar Pichai said Google's search algorithms do not favor its own content.
• Amazon's Bezos added that he could not guarantee that a policy prohibiting Amazon from using seller data to inform its private-label brands has not been violated.

Read the full story here.

The 31 top power players helping CEO Evan Spiegel run Snap

• Tanya Dua and Paige Leskin identified the top leaders at Snap, which has made a comeback from challenges a couple years ago.
• The executives include chief business officer Jeremi Gordon, VP of Americas Peter Naylor, VP of global operations Radhika Kakkar, and VP of US advertiser solutions Luke Kallis who help run Snap's advertising business.
• The executives also span engineering, policy and investor relationships.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

• Some members of multilevel-marketing company Young Living are making questionable claims about 'essential oils' curing cancer and coronavirus (Business Insider)
• Short-form video app Triller has hired 18-year-old TikTok star Josh Richards as its chief strategy officer and an investor says it's looking to raise $250 million in new funding (Business Insider)
• 'We are not the enemy': TikTok CEO slams Facebook for attacking the Chinese company and launching 'copycat' product (Business Insider)
• The pandemic reshaped Americans' daily Starbucks routine, leading to menu tweaks and a new time for the morning coffee run (Business Insider)
• ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50 billion in takeover bid — sources (Reuters)
• The Trade Desk is building version 2.0 of its unified ID (Adweek)

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow! You can reach me in the meantime at ljohnson@businessinsider.com and subscribe to this daily email here.

— Lauren