How adtech vet Paul Palmieri is pitching his new e-commerce startup

Lauren Johnson

Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 9. 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's news: Paul Palmieri's new e-commerce startup, Expedia's PR scramble, and Amazon's plan to rewrite the retail calendar.

Paul Palmieri, the former founder of mobile adtech company Millennial Media and VC firm Grit Capital, has raised $3.3 million in a seed round of funding for a new e-commerce startup called Tradeswell, reports Tanya Dua.
The company's investor pitch deck says that it can solve problems for e-commerce brands like marketing, retail, inventory, logistics and forecasting.
"E-commerce could be a trillion-dollar opportunity but no one yet has built anything for the benefit of brands," said Palmieri. "Tradeswell is like an AI layer that allows brands that trade goods on multiple channels to have a single platform that serves them — they get not just data, but also the context around that."

A leaked document shows how Expedia sought PR help to repair its reputation after the coronavirus hit the travel industry, Sean Czarnecki reports.
The RFP issued in the spring states that Expedia saw "5-7 times our usual volumes, even in our busiest times and equates to hundreds of thousands of calls."
The brief called for a firm to help with PR and social media and potentially work with Expedia's creative agency of record with the goal of hiring an agency by mid-May, but the company acknowledged that the process could be altered.

Amazon is pushing back its annual Prime Day sale to next week because of the coronavirus.
The move shows Amazon's growing sway over the retail business with Target and Walmart also planned to have similar sales, Áine Cain reports.
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon moved its Prime Day sales events to mid-October.
"Amazon commands such a significant share of retail and is growing so rapidly that I think retailers have to be aware and have to compete," said Edward Jones retail analyst Brian Yarmouth.