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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.

Commentary

Zero cost

Edition #444 Is Robinhood’s Sherwood News all about zero cost acquisition? CitiGroup appoints a Chief Marketing & Content Officer, and Uber adopts TikTok style content. Big week of stories ahead, first up I discuss Robinhood’s foray into brand publishing. Robinhood’s Sherwood News launched this week, and it seems to be about finance culture in general. They even had launch advertisers! See campaign of the week. They said they want to staff up to 40 folks by end of year. Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
April 12, 2024
Commentary

Yahoo Creators

Edition #443 Yahoo gets into the creator game with a savvy proposition, happy hours and programmatic finds new data. I got a text this week, it was from Wayne Blodwell. Hey, do you think folks would want to come to an Attention Happy Hour? An event for those interested in the attention space. Why not? If you’d like to join in New York, 25th of April. Leave your details. Location TBD. First one is informal, if demand will… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
April 5, 2024
Commentary

AI contracts

Edition #442 Agencies restricting AI use in contracts, LinkedIn goes TikTok? And the traffic firehose isn’t coming back. Amidst news about Accenture booking an insane amount of GenAI projects, AdAge shared how advertisers are placing more restrictions on their partners when it comes to AI in their work. Which makes sense, remove that risk by specifying in the contract. Am I surprised? Not really, I can see easier to say blanket no, and remove the risk, then over… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 29, 2024
Commentary

Dull advertising

Edition #441 Dull advertising, overexposure and the space economy. Overexposure and dull ads. Two topics that don’t come up often but are in this weeks note. Edward Cotton shared: “Working with System1 data, Adam showed that 75% of ads in System 1’s US database could be classified as dull, doing the math to calculate how many $ are being wasted, he emerged with the figure of $46 billion.“ His takeaway was that it “fires off a warning to those… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 22, 2024
Commentary

Grand opening

Edition #440 Even sandwich shops need adtech? Tailoring with Monocle and music videos are back.  The week before last was the grand opening of a new sandwich shop around the corner. I learnt about it, by cycling past, and saw them taking a grand opening sign being taken in. Then that Friday, on Threads, I follow @nyc_forfree, which announced that yes indeed it was opening, and they were offering free sandwiches that day! It was torrential with rain. Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 15, 2024
Commentary

Predictions

Edition #439 Learning to ride again, predictions and Ikeas wonderful partnership with Annie Leibovitz. I’ve been teaching my eldest to ride a bike, which is pure joy. And we’re at the part where you feel they have the balance, so let go at the back of the bike, and off they go for a bit. And each time just trying to extend and getting a bit further. You’re getting that intuitive feel, and go! This got me thinking… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 8, 2024
Commentary

Q4 Part2?

Edition #438 LVMH launches a brand entertainment division, adtech surveillance, AI rights on platforms. This week Wired has a couple of stories about Adtech being used to triangulate folks and a small Iowa newspapers domain being acquired and hijacked with AI content. The former capitalizing on the excess data from every ad auction. Turns out even if you lost the auction you could still get the data, so firms have packaged this up and sold it. Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 1, 2024
Commentary

Curation

Edition #437 Media planners as DJs, Reddit & Google strike an AI deal & X has a bot traffic problem. Curation is having a moment, in the face of a cookieless future, curated deals are all the talk. Some compare them to ad networks, which is astute, curated deals sit on top of publishers, and are a selection of the sites/urls to match an audience, contextual target, attention thresholds etc. The reason it is compelling is you can… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
February 23, 2024
Commentary

Browser appreciation

Edition #436 On Marie condo, browser appreciation and why brands say the big game. We take the browser for granted. We open our favourite each day and spend our lives using it as a portal to the internet. Every screen time report you get, how much was through a browser? A lot right. We trust that Apple is looking after us with Safari, making it faster, more private and reducing battery usage. Before that, Chrome & Firefox were… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
February 16, 2024
Commentary

Goldilocks Principle

Edition #435 On the goldilocks principle, YouTube paying out $70b to creators – and will the third party cookie go? This is the week we are treated to the most delightful ads of the year. Microsoft dropped their Copilot ad, with Copilot as your assistant to do whatever you want to do. And last week Uber Eats had their teaser with the Beckhams, also good. But it’s a funny ceremony isn’t it, with maybe the biggest… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
February 9, 2024