Category: Commentary

Commentary

Real AI

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

Ben Young

September 19, 2024

Commentary

Brand vs Performance

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

Ben Young

September 12, 2024

Commentary

Branded messages

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

Ben Young

September 5, 2024

Commentary

Root causes

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

Ben Young

August 29, 2024

Commentary

Ideas

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

Ben Young

August 15, 2024

Commentary

Outcomes

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

Ben Young

August 9, 2024

Commentary

Meta 22%

Edition #458 What drove Meta’s 22% growth, Outbrain makes a huge acquisition and Ilona Maher 🏉. What’s the potential impact on AI for ads? 22% YOY growth if Meta is any example. With a stonkers quarter, it has everyone else going, alright that’s the benchmark, where/how soon/can we get that sort of improvement? Whether you’re on the brand side, or the tech side, both have opportunities for this type of improvement. A strength Facebook has is its closed eco-system,… Continue reading

Ben Young

August 1, 2024

Commentary

Browser Wars

Edition #457 The Browser Wars are upon us, Olympics are here – what brands can and can’t do & Netflix Stories. I’m a sucker for the Olympics, so it’s no surprise a brand activation made the cut this week. Kind of looking forward to seeing what else we get through the games. Long time readers might remember the last Olympics how we spoke on the brand guidelines around the Olympics, worth taking a peek at this years guidelines. They’re… Continue reading

Ben Young

July 25, 2024

Commentary

Underpriced Attention

Edition #456 We have a guest open this week, underpriced attention, Taboola & Apple partner and Chrome/Safari at loggerheads. Back on schedule. This week we have a guest opening from Wayne Blodwell of Impact Media, they’ve been making waves in the attention space. I asked him what he was seeing at the moment in the attention space. Over to him.  Wayne here, at Impact Media we work with agencies and brands to guarantee attention with ads… Continue reading

Ben Young

July 18, 2024

Commentary

Oslo

Edition #455 From who won Cannes to Oslo with their campaign and closed pilots on attention. This week I promised some data on who won Cannes? Using our attention model on earned media, we took a look. With attention metrics getting adoption in the advertising mix, PR is also looking to adopt better measures of impact and quality.  The idea is that, getting a mention isn’t enough, you want earned media that has impact. And in that regard Elon… Continue reading

Ben Young

June 27, 2024