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Edition #284 George Floyd Response
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. . . It’s not that we signed an open letter, or that Twitter & Google showed support, or the multitude of brands… Continue reading
Anatomy of bots: how we saved a major tech company from paying seven figures for fraudulent traffic
We hear a lot about bot fraud and fake traffic. There are astounding numbers and when the money is being paid for a brand budget but being lost to these bad actors, you can be sure there’s no significant business growth coming from it. It is essential to take this beyond the headlines, from abstraction and dive into what is happening here. Following is a vivid example of a bot campaign in action, with one of our clients. All names… Continue reading
Edition #283 Home buyers and their adtech taxes
Inspired by a tweet from Hunter Walk, this week at the very bottom we’ve added a few newsletters we dig. Please do check them out and give them a try. One big thing I didn’t really comment on the revenue sharing piece a few weeks back. Wanted to mull on it for a bit as I felt too much nuance was left out of the conversation. To recap, PWC after completing a two-year study found;… Continue reading
Edition #282 The Howard Stern move
A couple of friends need a hand, How can I help, a social cause is looking for a volunteer to help with SEO. Another colleague is looking for a paid content role for a sports brand. Ping me for details. One big thing Spotify pulls the Howard Stern play of podcasts signing Joe Rogan. The move added $1b to their market cap, in what is a multi-year deal worth over $100m. Continue reading
Edition #281 Brands inevitable DTC future
One big thing Even PlayStation is going direct to consumer with the launch of Playstation studios, ahead of the PS5 launch. “Sony has developed a new umbrella brand to unite its first-party PlayStation titles. The PlayStation Studios brand will go live in PlayStation 4 and 5 games later this year, and will only be featured on games developed and managed by Sony Interactive Entertainment's Worldwide Studios organization.” It’s not that they will now produce games… Continue reading
Edition #280 Brand Balance Sheets, 5/8
One big thing As we transition to the new normal, those brands that are spending, are starting to invest in marketing assets. Assets like app installs, newsletter subscribers, upper-funnel audience, training, webinar attendance. “The roughly $40 billion app-install market was “likely the most material contributor this quarter” to social media ad spend, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.” And why not, with attention up and cost per clicks down, it's a perfect storm. By my calculations,… Continue reading
Edition #279 Weird Earnings, 5/1
One big thing What the stock market got wrong this week. Alphabet, Google, Facebook and Twitter were all up after earnings after most analysts expected a bigger hit to revenue. Yet for most firms, the virus was only an impediment for a fraction of the quarter. Advertisers won't have cut straight away – behavior would be distributed through that timeframe. What should be in focus, is how they are addressing Q2. And that speaks to the uncertainty, see below. Continue reading
This Week in Native Ads 4/24
It’s Friday, you did it, again 🙂 One big thing This week felt like the real start to the second quarter and we’re seeing it in this week’s stories. With earnings season in, Snap usage rising, Google making hiring freezes, the waters are still choppy. But business must go on, NBCU announced a more integrated ad product with their own ecommerce check out. And Horizon media took a deep dive into how our use of emojis has changed in… Continue reading
This Week in Native Ads 4/17
You did, you made it to Friday – well done. One big thing You want to be careful to not be caught in a false economy. On the one hand, you see podcast revenue is up, which is likely committed revenue which hasn’t yet been pulled back. On the other, you see the pipeline of new content is reducing. But eyeballs are at all-time highs. The London Business School put together a PDF on the… Continue reading
This Week in Native Ads 4/3
Recapping an internal note we sent to clients this week. We’ve put up a page covering Covid-19 and impact on marketing, media and content. We’re updating it daily. We continue to offer Nudge to the community, COVID causes and insights sessions. One big thing This tweet stream from Alex Russell caught my eye – on mobile CPUs and the performance inequality gap. The outtake is that the cheapest high… Continue reading