Conagra Brands

Conagra Taps WPP’s Barrows as Commerce Agency

Conagra Brands has named WPP-owned agency Barrows as its new commerce marketing agency of record after a competitive review. Barrows will handle shopper marketing, retail media, digital shelf presentation and in-store activations for Conagra’s portfolio, which includes Slim Jim, Reddi-wip, Swiss Miss and Orville Redenbacher’s. WPP previously took a 35% stake in Barrows in 2012 and completed a full acquisition of the business in January; Barrows now sits inside WPP’s restructured commerce offering, WPP Commerce, led by Brent Taylor, who was appointed global CEO of WPP Commerce in April after serving as Barrows’ CEO for more than nine years.

Overlooked First‑Party Data Outperforms Chasing New Signals

This MarTech Series guest article (May 27, 2026) by Shane Norris (VP, Head of Sales at Fyllo) argues that brands are underutilizing first‑party data while chasing new tracking signals. Norris says even small, well‑structured first‑party datasets (as few as 500 users) can be activated to create high‑performing audiences, improve ROAS, and lower acquisition costs. Two forces — privacy-driven reductions in third‑party identifiers and advances in semantic targeting, predictive modeling, and NLP — are making first‑party data more valuable and scalable. Regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, public affairs) provide useful privacy‑first targeting blueprints. The article recommends auditing existing data, prioritizing structure over scale, activating signals beyond owned channels, and maintaining continuous activation. It also describes Fyllo’s Proteus platform as an NLP‑powered, privacy‑first cross‑channel audience solution for regulated categories.

Is First-Party Data Losing Its AdTech Value?

AdExchanger’s Commerce Newsletter asks whether the promised value of first‑party data has lived up to expectations, pointing to a wave of DTC brand struggles. Allbirds and Solo Brands have fallen from IPO highs to around $1–$3, SmileDirectClub bankruptcy, and Parade and Lunya failures. The piece acknowledges clear, tangible value in first‑party data but notes high costs—subscription tech, data science, and ongoing platform fees—along with cookies, IP changes, and ad blockers that erode one‑to‑one use cases. It also highlights vendor consolidation: CDPs are being subsumed into larger SaaS bundles, while cloud giants price DIY alternatives aggressively. AWS released Entity Resolution at zero cost that can replace many CDP tasks, and LiveRamp purchased Habu to bolster data collaboration. The article concludes that while first‑party data has merit, the revolution may be playing out on the cloud rather than inside individual businesses.