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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.
Edition #467 On the problem with game metrics, Adweek AI and loads of deals this week. Thoroughly enjoyed the AI in Marketing panel that Chalice AI hosted, turning the tables and having the journalists as the panelists, Sara Fischer, Lara O’Reilly, Allison Schiff and Kendra Barnett. Thanks for hosting. I haven’t had a chance to read through the latest in Google / DOJ but there’s no rush, any outcome is going to be years in the making with appeals… Continue reading
Edition #466 On what LLM ads could look like, Outbrain brings Moments to their publishers and who makes $1m/year on Substack? As promised I put some thoughts down on what LLM advertising could look like. I think the big variables in whether there is a whole net new ecosystem/platform does still come down to two variables, 1) how big each of them get with sustained usage. Alphabet, Meta & Microsoft are all exhausting the potential use cases and growth… Continue reading
Smart studios leverage their knowledge to predict & create better work Brand studios have been experimenting with AI tools on the content creation side but may have overlooked the potential, on the data & insights side. This is where there is a whole whitespace of opportunity, to not only improve the work & drive performance but stimulate creativity. Studios can now build predictive models, which can take any new piece of work, and predict… Continue reading
Edition #465 Cloudflare comes to the creators rescue, conversational podcast on demand & Spotify giving out big deals. A huge week in stories, bare with us, and do take your time, there’s some goodies in there. One thread I picked up on Twitter was talking about how LLMs ads might look/work. So I think I’ll put together a piece on that, would love your thoughts/feedback. A question I am lingering on is, how is this an opportunity to do something… Continue reading
Edition #464 Viant launch something tangible to point at, Perplexity posters and will the Google breakup be everything everyone wants? This week we have Joe Zappa joining us for the intro, he’s been a sage voice of recent on adtech marketing & positioning and I’ve been enjoying how he shines the light on the good stuff in the industry. Joe here. Monday Viant launched ViantAI, an “autonomous advertising” platform that automates a great deal of the media buying process. As… Continue reading
Edition #463 A great example of brand vs performance from ANZ, AI fraud on Spotify and 007. How could I not touch on this Mark Ritson piece, featuring ANZ bank in New Zealand. It lifts the veil on how a brand campaign, got stretched into other areas and lost its way. “And you try to build brand and achieve customer acquisition all within the same ad, you end up not doing either one particularly well.” Not that this is… Continue reading
Edition #462 Snaps new ad product ALA Gmail ads, AI prophecies and is black box models a bargain trade off? Snap is set to offer branded content in the inbox, ALA Gmail ads. Or I guess Messenger ads (which now as I write this I don’t think I’ve seen in the wild). I have experimented with the Gmail ads and they did work well, except the click out was a double click, click into the message, read then… Continue reading
Edition #461 Root causes, Perplexity’s ad push, MySpace and how to improve open web ad buying. I think the root cause of the angst in digital media, is driven by the slower growth. With digital growth dropping below double digit percentages (7.4% this year) that forces change through the whole eco-system. It’s no longer a high growth eco-system. In the rapid expansion of digital spend, this created (literally) new media, which then needed advertisers behind it. This meant,… Continue reading
Edition #460 The power of ideas, Olympics are over 🙁 and Emilys piece. One of my fav things to do with clients, is put together a deck of ideas, things we could do to solve their business problems. From lightweight to complex, from safe to risky (although how risky does analytics get?!). But it’s just good practice & exercise and it always yields rich feedback and opportunities. The exercise incentivizes creative thinking, distilling of thoughts and fresh ideas. But most… Continue reading
Edition #459 Outcomes, branded content and what enterprise advertisers are doing wrong. Thanks to Pepper for having my hot take on cookies this week! Extending last weeks chat on Meta’s earnings and the role of AI & ML in paving a path forward. Similar this week, this tweet caught my eye, about how enterprise advertisers shouldn’t be using ‘click’ as a primary KPI. And he’s right, without careful controls, the advertiser will end up getting any… Continue reading