Macy's fashion and beauty products will be available for purchase directly in the DoorDash app, The Wall Street Journal reports, marking the department store's shift from a quiet delivery arrangement to a consumer-facing partnership.

The retailer has offered DoorDash delivery through its own site and app for several years. Now it is making the tie-up visible to shoppers.

DoorDash has struck similar deals with Timberland, Vans, Victoria's Secret, Steve Madden and Anthropologie. The company is assembling a network of apparel and beauty retailers that fulfill orders quickly from their stores — a mall repurposed as a distributed delivery hub.

The business underneath those partnerships is retail media. DoorDash gains more merchandise, shoppers and signals to monetize. Retailers get another route to demand, plus access to DoorDash's delivery and advertising infrastructure.

Retail partnerships are rarely as tidy as press releases make them sound. Target ended its formal relationship with Instacart after acquiring Shipt in 2018, yet shoppers can still use Instacart to order Target products for same-day delivery. Criteo has similarly retained business with retailers, including Walmart, even after those retailers publicly moved away from its platform. The vendor may lose the marquee role, but not necessarily the account. And the relationship can remain quiet or become consumer-facing, depending on what each side needs.

ChatGPT Ads Still Can't Count

Nearly eight months after ChatGPT first launched ads, OpenAI is still ironing out measurement kinks.

The company launched a host of measurement solutions in May, including its own CAPI, but the platform is not necessarily tracking all conversions and engagement accurately.

Digital marketing agency Accuracast found that OpenAI seems to be underreporting conversions. The platform reported 100 clicks during a period when Accuracast's own measurement tools reported only 20, according to Digiday. OpenAI couldn't explain the discrepancy.

Other agencies, including Jellyfish, and tech platforms such as AdRoll say they haven't seen click discrepancies — but that doesn't mean they're satisfied. Swedish digital agency Web Guide Partner has voiced concern over how long it takes to receive insights: 24 to 36 hours versus just a few on Google.

Many advertisers haven't turned on conversion tracking at all. Doing so requires agreeing to OpenAI's tracking terms, which some legal teams resist over potential liability and concerns about how customer data might be used.

Taxpayer Dollars Buy Pro-Trump Airtime

The Trump administration is running pro-Trump ads on TV networks including Fox News, CBS, MS Now and CNN, Variety reports.

The administration has spent nearly $2.9 million so far to run three different spots ahead of next month's midterm elections, according to ad intelligence firm AdImpact. A White House spokesperson characterized the ads — in which the president vows to battle socialism and touts his policy agenda — as public service announcements.

Brendan Carr, chair of the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission, says he sees no issue with the ads.

At MS Now, some staff are surprised and peeved that the liberal-leaning network is running pro-Trump commercials, Status reports. Others argue the ads don't violate standards set by MS Now parent company Versant, which explicitly accepts "divergent points of view" related to politics.

The timing is awkward given Trump's crackdown on MS Now's coverage, but networks need revenue. Only a few months have passed since Versant spun off from Comcast in an effort to bolster its monetization.

In Brief

• Very few marketers — just 6% — say they're getting a big payoff from AI, according to Business Insider.
• Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says the platform "is not growing as fast as [he wants] it to," per The Hollywood Reporter.
• The New York Times examines who should be held responsible when an AI system goes rogue.
• Shopping platform Swap Commerce has acquired Vizby, a Shopify-native service that helps brands show up in AI search responses.

Moves

OpenX has appointed former Roku executive John Rogers as SVP of global publisher development.

As DoorDash turns storefront inventory into ad inventory and OpenAI works to close its measurement gap, both cases point to the same pressure: media buyers will follow the platforms that can prove — and quickly report — what their money delivered.