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Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.

2024 Datapoints of Note

All the datapoints of note from the newsletter this year. You can view all old newsletters here. This list, top to bottom, goes from oldest to newest. In November, Comscore reported that The Messenger generated 88m page views in only 7 months. Substack writer Eric Newcomer says his revenue surpassed $1m in 2023. With 75,000 free subscribers and 2,000 paid subscribers. People on TikTok are reportedly tipping as much as $11m a day. Online… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 29, 2024

Wonky start

Edition #433 A wonky start to the year, with pubs hurting, cookies & then promising M&A. Hold tight. For the rest of us, business continues. The Liveramp Habu deal has the M&A folks of the industry excited, at least on the technology side of the fence. Does this bode well for a year of adtech/martech M&A activity? On the other hand, for publishers, it’s like a 2023 redux, where the start of the year is shaky, at… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 26, 2024

Spicy takes

Edition #432 Spicy takes on Googles Sandbox this week, MrBeast tests X video & LiveRamp makes a big acquisition. Curious to see MrBeast drop a video on X, openly wanting to see how it performs. It’s already been documented how the view count threshold was dropped on X, meaning the view count doesn’t equate to similar elsewhere. Reminds me when at a point in time, scrolling past a video on Facebook counted as a view. Nonetheless, I… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 19, 2024

The Analytics Note Resources

We will add to this page, resources mentioned in the newsletter. SubReddits Data is beautiful. Analytics Podcasts World of DAAS Newsletters Seattle Data Guy Twitter follows Ben Rogojan, @Seattle Data Guy Eric Seufert, @eric_seufert… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 16, 2024

Predictive analytics

Edition #431 How predictive solutions provide a path forward, branded content trends & how are the uncookied Chrome users performing. In Toolkits themes for the year ahead, we heard from Nativo’s Erin Tye talking on how in a world where the cookie is going away predictive audiences offer an alternative solution. And I think this call is bang on. Where something can’t be directly measured, predictive models will take their place. And that’s a good thing! Predictive… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 12, 2024

Stapling jelly

Edition #430 Stapling jelly on the wall, OpenAI offers pubs payments & we hear more on Threads. I heard a wonderful saying on the FT Morning Briefing, ‘trying to stick staple jelly against the wall’. The hosts referring to the challenges investors had during 2023, trying to get investment theses to stick in a changing environment. I mean, our industry is all about throwing ideas against the wall to see if they stick ha. What things… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 5, 2024

2023 Fin

Edition #429 The last note of the year, themes of note from the year that’s been. The final note of the year! I wasn’t even sure if I sent one. As I mentioned in the last note, it’s been one of the busiest q4’s since before covid. Whilst I imagine, more people this year are already on holiday, compared to Dec 22nd of 2019. I thought I should. It’s not going to be a regular edition, I thought… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 22, 2023

Anti AI

Edition #428 Gartner predicts brands will adopt an anti-AI stance, Reelshort, Hivestack acquired & X to pick up Amazon ad demand. AdtechGod tweeted, “It’s supposed to slow down not speed up in December!!!!!” which has certainly been the feeling, I don’t recall a December that’s been this busy in a while. It’s good, I enjoy that end of year rush, to get everything done, before decompressing ahead of the new year.  In New Zealand, it’s quite… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 15, 2023

Podcast theatre

Edition #427 On the podcast theatre trend & podcasting in general, Yetis year in preview & will Reddit IPO? It’s a tired trope, guy (usually white), talking into a mic in our feeds, it’s part of a wider trend I’m calling podcast theatre. I even saw a thread about can we get a content blocker for these guy speaking to podcast mic videos? Half the time I don’t even think they’re on a podcast, they’ve just set it… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 8, 2023

Losing trust

Edition #426 Mega post-thanksgiving edit, Idris Elba goes searching for gold, what does losing trust in media & AI have to do with one another? And would you pay for branded content? This week Shareen Pathak, Co-founder & EIC, at Toolkits is our guest editor (yay!). I’ve long been a fan of Shareen’s work, since Digiday times, and at Toolkits they have been releasing super interesting data around brand publishing & brand content. So I thought I’d… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 1, 2023