2022 Begins

Welcome to 2022, a year already started with omicron confusion & disruption. Each of us in our microcosms. Microcosm is a great word to sum up operating this year. How can each brand operate in their safe zone. And as each of their competitors pushes that safe zone out, will they follow or not.

We had an influx of subscribers at year end, so a warm welcome to you all. ????

• New publishers experimented with NFTs in 2021.
• ^ If you missed our last edition of 21, we had created our own NFT for newsletter subs.
• PGA Tour is doing their own ‘Drive to Survive’ with Netflix. Content marketing on Netflix has well and truly arrived.
• Felix Salmon shares a thread about promoted tweets from Master Works, the art startup.
• Netflix’s ‘Hype House’ shows the dark side of the creator economy.
• Podcasters are letting software pick their ads – it’s already going awry.
• There’s an internet debate raging over Web3.
• The Web3 Renaissance: A Golden Age for Content.
• Media experts sound alarm on the rise of paywalled content.
• The Discord community where marketers learn about Web3.
• Spotify shuts down its namesake podcast studio.
• Crypto companies are making aggressive last-minute bids for the sold-out Super Bowl.
• Spotify introduces a new ad format for podcasts that puts clickable cards inside shows.
• The great fragmentation of ads.
• NBCUniversal pulls its consumer data into new marketing platform.

Deals/M&A

• Atmosphere raises $100m for its business focused streaming tv service.
• Ad-Tech company Smartly.io to buy Ad-Lib.io.
• 2022’s dealmaking is already underway, will it be a year of smaller, better, cheaper?
• Candle Media buys stake in media company co-founded by Will Smith & Jada Pinkett Smith.
• Cloudinary extends video capabilities with Indivio acquisition.
• GumGum acquires attention measurement and optmiization platform Playground xyz.
• NYT to buy The Athletic for $550m.
• Mayfair Equity Partners is set to take a majority stake in LoopMe.

Campaign of the Week

• Cash Apps, My First Stock. Best viewed on mobile.

• “We know this. Just as we know that the rulers of empires will be kept well informed. What we don’t know is whether democratic publics will have quality news and information that wins their attention and fits their budget.” – Jay Rosen, Journalism Professor, New York University.

Datapoints of note

• For every hour that Americans listened to podcasts in 2021, they listened to six and a half hours of AM/FM radio.
• HBO Max and HBO ended 2021 with 73.8m global subscribers.
• Apple paid developers $60b in 2021.

That’s it for this week.