Edition #539
Measurement, The Big Short & Ask the News.
I gave a shout out a while back to Ask the Post, the Washington Post’s AI driven feature to interact with the site but also to dig deeper around articles. Recall they have a subsidiary, Arc, which provides their own CMS/tech stack for publishers to run on.
Now Arc has rolled out Ask the News, for any publisher using Arc to leverage. Smart. Next step, monetise those queries!
Now, have any readers watched The Big Short? Michael Burry, the investor who shorted credit default swaps. Returned to Twitter a few years back, and started a Substack. He could be on track to earn $10m-$15m in revenue this year. What.
Good to be in finance right?
In measurement news, VideoAMP and Nielsen One pull out of MRC accreditation process. Highlighting the fractured nature of measurement right now, a mirror of the media environment.
Last quarter I also called out the potential of X Articles. Satya Nadella proved that out this week, with 11m views on his The Reverse Information Paradox.
Now, what constitutes a view? I think it’s at least clicking into the article. But, can you think of any other medium where a longform (read anything longer than a post) would get any sort of viewership in the millions?
Maybe a rewatch of The Big Short is on the queue for this weekend.
Notable stories this week
- Publishers take on ten-AI giants with CCJs.
- X tweaked its algorithm to make it more friendly, less battleground.
- Semator is betting big on ‘anti-scale’ video.
- Business Development Theater.
- OpenAI’s ad business is on pace to miss its own forecast by 90%.
- Cloudflare launches Precursor: detecting agentic behavior with continuous client-side signals.
- WTF is SPUR’s publisher run Content Telemetry framework?
- Future of targeting, media agencies tentatively explore vector based planning.
- Gates heir’s shopping app claimed sales it didn’t drive.
- ArcXP launches Ask the News.
- Meta’s AI advertising dreams have become a nightmare for brands.
- M+C Saatchi NA launches entertainment arm as branded content booms.
- AI visibility is becoming publishers newest currency.
- Brands quietly exploit right to alter influencer content with AI.
- Everyone is a gamer: inside mobile gaming’s biggest audience opportunity.
- VideoAmp, Nielsen One Pull Out Of MRC Accreditation Process.
- AI videos are flooding TikTok shop.
- Digital video ad spending is booming – trust in premium inventory isn’t.
- Stagwell is building its own AI media curation marketplace.
- Publishers, author file class action lawsuit against Google.
- AI has revived the micropayments dream.
- Declared ‘good bots’ mixed use crawlers, gray scrapers, how AI accesses publisher content.
- OpenAI sees fewer users dismissing ChatGPT ads as it scales.
Deals/M&A
- Netflix among parties in early talks to buy Letterboxd.
Campaign of the week
- Nicholas Braun with Shinola, Set the Pace.
- ^ Caught via Adweek.
Smartest commentary
- “The bar in adtech for what counts as a meaningful partnership announcement has been so low for so long that most practitioners have stopped noticing. The press release goes out, the trade publication covers it, the quarter gets checked off, and nobody asks the question that matters: did this change anything?” –Natrian Maxwell.
Events
- Next breakfast coming up August.
That’s it for this week.
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