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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

Models

Edition #361 Data models, Windows 11 ads and no more IPs. One big thing Measurement is a hot topic at the moment, so I thought I’d share a snippet from an older post, on what leads to success. “McKinsey recently published new research findings, stating that organizations that deploy the most technology appear to be the most successful. At first glance, this might seem somewhat illogical (as adding more technology into current infrastructures lead to more complexities and… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 18, 2022
Commentary

Owned stacks

Edition #360 Native awards, Microsofts new ad religion and elephant growth. Congratulations to all the winners of the native advertising awards! Nice to see a few familiar names. One big thing Kevel (formerly AdZerk) has built a nice business, with a build your own ad stack type solution. And it seems, that Google is now gingerly testing this space with retailers. With the view of, in a privacy-centric world, centralized ad technology has less room to… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 11, 2022
Commentary

Measurement redux

Edition #359 A measurement redux, opportunities in branded content & TikTok. One big thing A trend you may not have seen in the tea leaves is that a lot of measurement companies are being acquired right now. Oribi, Tunity, TVSquared, Playground XYZ & Shareables. And that’s just since December. What’s driving that? The instigator was Apples tracking changes. Forcing many firms to either throw our their existing technology or seek to add deep capabilities. The other area is connected… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
March 4, 2022
Product Updates

QR Codes

Edition #358 QR codes, how Fortune got to $100m and attention. One big thing The sheer bravery of Coinbase to run that ad in the Super Bowl is to be applauded. Yes it performed well, 20 million visits in one minute. Crashed their site. One quip I saw was that marketing beat engineering! But it might not have. For those that haven’t seen it here it is. A QR code bouncing around a screen, just like the… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
February 18, 2022
Commentary

Plant Based

Edition #357 The earnings merry go-round, content arbitrage & plant-based diets. One big thing I really enjoyed Ben Thompson’s summation of the digital ad eco-system as of 2022. And how the various pieces have come together in the past year or so. In particular you see Apples changes with ATT, moving spend away from Facebook, and in turn enhancing Amazon’s ad product. Because Amazons data all stays on platform. His macro takes are usually pretty good. We’ve had… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
February 11, 2022
Analytics

How to verify branded content

Are you looking to verify the performance of your branded content? Then you’ve come to the right place. What makes branded content verification different to other advertising, is the art and science. Content requires consumption to be effective. And then, often you need to verify the traffic sources to the content. Often also there are technical challenges that need to be overcome. The other challenge can be the scale, often branded content has less impressions than say a display campaign. Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 31, 2022
Commentary

New celebrity

Edition #356 Cameo, Microsofts $10b business and carbon emissions. One big thing Microsoft brought in $10 billion in ad revenue in the last 12 months. For a combined business that is bigger than Snap & Twitter combined. NEW: @Microsoft brought in $10 billion+ in ad revenue in last 12 months (ex TAC), which includes LinkedIn— Comes amid a renewed ad push from the tech firm— Microsoft acquired ATT’s addressable… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 28, 2022
Commentary

Merger Mania

Edition #355 MOAR acquisitions, meme creators turned VC and tools for content creators. One big thing Banker to adtech/martech Terry Kawaja shared this tweet about tech M&A in the roaring 20’s. And it is most of the new news each week, acquisitions all round. And it is exactly like this image, bigger fish picking up a smaller fish, who had already scooped up several smaller fish. Digiday this week dug in to how say the likes of… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 21, 2022
Commentary

2022 Begins

Edition #354 Microcosms, acquisition’s and PGA does content marketing. One big thing 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… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
January 14, 2022
Commentary

2021 Fin.

Edition #353 Deal mania continues and we have a NFT :O. One big thing For a bit of fun and to say thank you, we minted some Nudge Punk NFTS.  If you’re a regular reader (we’ll check) send over your Solana wallet address and we’ll send you one. Thank you all for subscribing and sharing feedback through the year. If you need to get a wallet, I recommend creating a wallet with Phantom.app which works… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
December 23, 2021