Hearst Magazines, the world’s largest lifestyle publisher, announced the launch of AURA, a revolutionary, first-party ad targeting tool that utilizes proprietary AI-enabled technology and multi-dimensional contextual, behavioral and commerce signals to connect advertisers to their most valuable and engaged customers at scale. The announcement was made by Hearst Magazines President Debi Chirichella and Global Chief Revenue Officer Lisa Ryan Howard. AURA analyzes and activates Hearst’s broad and deep portfolio of first-party data and hundreds of millions of purchase actions from Hearst’s 145 million monthly visitors across its portfolio of more than 25 U.S. brands. The next-gen tool — which leverages a new, proprietary content taxonomy and sophisticated AI — provides a more comprehensive picture of a user than ever before and makes predictive and informed decisions about which ads to serve. The tool will expand globally across Hearst’s 50 brands and 300 million users in late 2024.

Hearst Magazines announced an expansion of AURA that, for the first time ever, brings together Hearst’s proprietary targeting signals with Amazon Ads trillions of browsing, shopping and streaming insights for programmatic campaigns exclusively available in Amazon DSP. Debuting at Cannes, this new offering unlocks a powerful, privacy-safe connection between content engagement across Hearst Magazines’ 30+ U.S. brands paired with in-market shopping insights from Amazon Ads. Enabled through Amazon Publisher Cloud, advertisers can easily reach audiences at the intersection of inspiration and purchase intent. “AURA is already delivering incredible results for our advertisers — driving higher click-through rates, deeper attention and measurable brand lift,” said Lisa Ryan Howard, global chief revenue officer at Hearst Magazines. “As we see increased programmatic interest in our inventory — especially from DSPs like Amazon — it’s the right time to bring the power of AURA targeting and meet buyers where they’re already transacting.”

Online spend surrounding Amazon’s Prime Day sales event is inching closer to Black Friday levels. In comparison to the $26.4 billion in online spend during this recent Prime Day, consumers spent about $32.45 billion across Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, per Adobe. Online sales from June 23 through June 26 were driven by electronics, appliances, tools and home improvement, as well as home and garden merchandise. Consumers used the sales period to buy more expensive products. Adobe’s data found the share of the most expensive products grew 19% compared to average levels year to date. The share of the most expensive goods in electronics jumped by 51%, and shoppers were trading up in categories such as toys, appliances and furniture.