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Edition #468
Digg, gamification of leisure and audiobook growth at Spotify, will it lead to branded audio?
I enjoyed this bit of internet history with TheVerge‘s interview of Digg founder Kevin Rose, they even made the story Digg themed.
This was like the last year of university when Digg was at its prime, the whole Web 2.0 era was upon us! I remember using rails to build my own ‘Web 2.0’ app fun.
Which gets me to a conversation I was having during Advertising Week, what happened to Web 3.0? Are we on to Web 4.0 or are we back at Web 2.0 and going to have another crack at 3.0? No idea. But is an interesting thought. I guess if anything, AI is the ‘Web 3.0’. More intelligent applications and peronalised experience.
Julia’s post on here’s what the fight for your attention really looks like is a good read, introduces a new phrase which I liked “I was thinking about the gamification of our leisure time earlier”. Too true.
The rapid rise in audiobooks at Spotify must be a game changer for the industry, bringing in a whole new flood of listeners. And I think that can be an under appreciated fact, bringing in all these new potential customers.
As to how the economics stack up – I’m not sure. But it does raise a new question, this new distribution point – is it time for branded content audiobooks? Way way back we covered Range Rover doing a little adventure story on Kindle in tandem with a launch. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see more of this in audio fashion now.
Notable stories this week
- Tumblr’s State of community is neat.
- Top 50 news websites in the US: all but four sites saw traffic fall in September.
- DV launches News Accelerator, with Jack Marshall joining as Head of News.
- As TikTok rolls out Smart+, marketers grapple with AI’s advertising puzzle.
- The Athletic Yahoo Sports partner on new women’s sports content hub.
- DOJ, NCIS ask ad executives about brand-safety companies.
- Taboola is looking to compete with Google and Facebook for small-business clients using a new generative AI tool for ad campaigns.
- Publishers are skeptical of Adtech’s latest buzzword Curation.
- Toolkits are running a session on email monetization for brand publishers.
- Oxford University professor says Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass marketing science rules not longer hold.
- Spotify paying audiobook publishers hundreds of millions annually.
- More storytelling, same budget? Marketers do more with less conundrum continues.
- The internet’s homepage.
- [Long read] Here’s what the fight for your attention really looks like.
Deals/M&A
- RedBird IMI takes majority stake in front office sports.
- Press Forward awards $20m to 205 small local newsrooms.
- Semrush acquires Search Engine Land.
Campaign of the week
- Nike, winning doesn’t always feel like winning.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “It’s funny, now, because I actually really wanted it to be a tech news website. And it was the community and others that ended up joining the team that pushed and forced my hand — not forced it but really said, “We should go for something bigger here.” And then once you get investors involved, there’s a lot of people sitting around the table that want to see you have that billion-dollar-plus outcome.” –Kevin Rose.
- ^ Investors pushing to broaden vs the tension of this is a good space to play in.
Datapoints of note
- Spotify has doubled the number of audiobook titles available from 150,000 to 300,000.
Events
- Watch this space!
View all 2024 datapoints of note.
That’s it for this week.
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