Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify A presidential election year has the potential to be a boon for news and politics publishers when it comes to drawing in and monetizing audiences. But even though 2024 is a lot like 2020 on paper, platform performance issues and an unreliable ad market may make this election cycle less lucrative than hoped.  For Newsweek’s global chief commercial and growth officer Kevin Gentzel, this means testing out new audience growth strategies and revenue streams to get back to growth this year. Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for ..read more

Seems like DTC (direct-to-consumer) has a new villain: Temu. For better or worse, this Chinese-owned online marketplace has been getting a lot of heat from the DTC crowd lately. Marketers there are pointing fingers at Temu, attributing the sharp surge in advertising costs across Meta’s ad platforms to its ad dollars. There’s been a lot of chatter on X, LinkedIn discussions and even some heated conversations on WhatsApp over the past week as these marketers worry about what they see as predatory growth. Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the lat ..read more

This is the first installment of a two-part series on the top ad-supported streaming services. This report provides an overview of the platforms’ offerings and an analysis of how brands and agencies distribute their ad budgets and ad placements across platforms. Topics covered include: Platforms’ plans, pricing and audience size Platforms’ ad options and new ad inventory YouTube’s command of the majority of ad placements The second installment will dive into the results of Digiday’s recent survey of brands and agencies to analyze how advertisers’ preferences for ad options, ad targeting and ..read more

This time last year, marketers watched in real time as the Bud Light boycott put a spotlight on influencer marketing, brand boycotts and a backlash to so-called “woke” advertising. The impact of the boycotts had marketers quickly moving to be more risk averse in their marketing and advertising efforts.  Even so, brand boycotts continue apace this year with the likes of Planet Fitness, McDonald’s and others grappling with their own boycotts in recent months. While the reasons for the boycotts vary, there’s a recognition among marketers now that a brand boycott could happen regardless of th ..read more

Looks like Google’s attempts to shake up targeted advertising in the Chrome browser are getting more eye rolls than applause. Even the U.K.’s privacy regulator the Information Commissioner’s Office is squinting skeptically, questioning if Google’s alternatives to third-party cookies will just stir up more trouble. These concerns have made their way to the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). But why does the group’s opinion matter so much? Stick around to uncover why it’s key in the whole saga of bidding farewell to third-party cookies. First up, WTF is the CMA? The CMA, or Competit ..read more

Newsletters are the darling of the digital media industry again. Publishers like Axios, Eater, The Guardian, theSkimm and Snopes are either growing or revamping their newsletter offerings, tailoring new emails to specific audiences with more personality-driven content (and, in some cases, with the help of automation to produce more newsletters) designed to get subscribers to sign up for more. Publishers are changing up their newsletters strategies to engage audiences as a wave of generative AI advancements increase the need for original content and referral traffic declines push publishers to ..read more

For nearly a decade, brand safety has been the ad world’s white whale — constantly evading the harpoon of those looking to steer clear of dangerous or salacious content. But the proliferation of generative AI has conjured up an even scarier kind of monster: a multi-headed hydra. The fight is already on. To boost its efforts around brand safety, IPG is adding more tools for identifying harmful content while also helping advertisers avoid appearing near it. One way is through an expanded partnership with Zefr, a brand-safety startup that tracks content across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Alon ..read more

As Earth Day 2024 is marked today, finger pointing is still prevailing over taking action in the effort to make digital advertising more sustainable.  Publishers say there is only so much supply path optimization they can do before it impacts their revenue. Meanwhile advertisers and brands say they can only shift budgets so far towards greener media until the data exists to prove lower-carbon campaigns perform just as well as traditional campaigns. And DSPs are held to the KPIs that their clients are demanding, though some are working to push dollars into greener avenues.  What resul ..read more

The second installment of marketing, media and tech tentpole aspirant Possible 2024 wrapped up last week, and for all intents and purposes it appeared to avoid the sophomore slump that often accompanies year-two efforts. Attendance was up more than 1,000 over 2023 to hit 3,600, and by and large attendees felt they were able to network and catch up with colleagues and clients just as, and in some cases more, effectively there as other tentpoles – be it CES, Cannes Lions, Dmexco or Advertising Week. Some people in the know at Possible said they see the potential of the conference taking a bite o ..read more

Amazon Prime’s “Fallout” television adaptation has struck a chord with streaming viewers, becoming the second major live-action video game adaptation to break through to a wider audience after 2023’s “The Last of Us.” As film and TV studios race to adapt popular video games to the big screen, post-apocalyptic fiction could be the secret to mainstream success. Amazon has not shared official viewership figures for its “Fallout” series, but social platforms have been awash with buzz about the show, which depicts an alternate future America desolated by nuclear war. Critics have lauded “Fallout ..read more