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
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
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
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
Edition #434 AI in branded content, Flashtalking’s big game ad & lego. Ever heard of The Hairpin? It was a beloved indie blog. And Wired highlights how someone bought the domain and has flooded it with AI content. To much dismay. Let’s dig into it. Consider these two scenarios: Scenario 1: A big publisher, automating the creation of fairly utility driven content. I.e. sports game summaries. Scenario 2: A scrappy newsletter, using AI to add extra editorial… Continue reading
Edition #433 A wonky start to the year, with pubs hurting, cookies & then promising M&A. Hold tight. For the rest of us, business continues. The Liveramp Habu deal has the M&A folks of the industry excited, at least on the technology side of the fence. Does this bode well for a year of adtech/martech M&A activity? On the other hand, for publishers, it’s like a 2023 redux, where the start of the year is shaky, at… Continue reading
Edition #432 Spicy takes on Googles Sandbox this week, MrBeast tests X video & LiveRamp makes a big acquisition. Curious to see MrBeast drop a video on X, openly wanting to see how it performs. It’s already been documented how the view count threshold was dropped on X, meaning the view count doesn’t equate to similar elsewhere. Reminds me when at a point in time, scrolling past a video on Facebook counted as a view. Nonetheless, I… Continue reading
Edition #431 How predictive solutions provide a path forward, branded content trends & how are the uncookied Chrome users performing. In Toolkits themes for the year ahead, we heard from Nativo’s Erin Tye talking on how in a world where the cookie is going away predictive audiences offer an alternative solution. And I think this call is bang on. Where something can’t be directly measured, predictive models will take their place. And that’s a good thing! Predictive… Continue reading
Edition #430 Stapling jelly on the wall, OpenAI offers pubs payments & we hear more on Threads. I heard a wonderful saying on the FT Morning Briefing, ‘trying to stick staple jelly against the wall’. The hosts referring to the challenges investors had during 2023, trying to get investment theses to stick in a changing environment. I mean, our industry is all about throwing ideas against the wall to see if they stick ha. What things… Continue reading
Edition #429 The last note of the year, themes of note from the year that’s been. The final note of the year! I wasn’t even sure if I sent one. As I mentioned in the last note, it’s been one of the busiest q4’s since before covid. Whilst I imagine, more people this year are already on holiday, compared to Dec 22nd of 2019. I thought I should. It’s not going to be a regular edition, I thought… Continue reading
