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Category: Commentary

Commentary; our thought leadership, newsletter notes and long form pieces.

Labor Day

Edition #415 Post Labor Day quiet, facial expressions and watch duration on YouTube – and TikTok movie watching. Post Labor Day, yeah this is a quieter week for stories. But hey, we’re all catching up! We dropped the next handbook, this one for publishers doing content partnerships. It’s a bit bigger than the others, but so is the operation, it’s not easy doing high quality content at scale! YouTube’s A/B testing for thumbnails looks like it will… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
September 8, 2023

Agencies forgot

Edition #414 We used to hear about agencies all the time, but no more? Threads partnerships & MrBeast tweets. One of the first agency parties I went to had a snow machine, in summer! It was the last hurrah I guess before the 08 crash. And even then agency folks reminisced of the prior glory days.  I share that because it feels like we don’t hear about agencies anymore. It used to be we heard about them… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
September 1, 2023

Mythbusters

Edition #413 Brand partnerships, Threads meets the open web and a new entrant into adtech? Hint its Sports. A tid bit from the MediaMath sale was that Sports Genius had also bid. A sports data company coming into advertising, or exploring ways to do it. Makes sense. Another in the trend of verticalized solutions. Threads opened up to the web, it feels funny that this was such a demand, but the web/desktop is where a lot… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
August 25, 2023

Zeal

Edition #412 On Disneys zeal for creating too much content, MrBeast & Puck raises $10m. Our thoughts go out to anyone affected by the fires in Maui. This week I answered a few questions for Attention Matters, thanks to Matt for pulling it together. Stories index a bit more towards streaming this week, with the recent earnings. But it is summer so things are a bit quieter for a few more weeks. The Paramount commentary was good,… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
August 11, 2023

Brandformance

Edition #411 TikTok’s brandformance, static posts, Idris Elba and have you seen the Cheech & Chong ads? This week from a train, going through the longest tunnel in Europe – Gotthard Base Tunnel. We’ve had a lot of earnings recently, Alphabet, Meta, Uber. And it seems optimism is up for the second half of the year. At least when it comes to advertising. Uber, now profitable, has expectations of exceeding $1b/year in ad sales in… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
August 4, 2023

Mindshare

Edition #410 Kids versions of sports events, TikTwitter & Alf is making a comeback? First edit from an airport in a while! Last week I mentioned the Twitter thing, where Elon is using attention to measure the success of the app. And also, there was an eMarketer on how if you look at Metas share of attention vs its spend, marketers should be assigning a lot more to Meta! Kind of Mary Meeker vibes. And I… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
July 28, 2023

Barbie

Edition #409 Because isn’t everything Barbie this week? On Threads, will it make it and something from us. Been a couple of weeks between notes – with school ending and then a family break – I am about. In fact from the other side of the pond this week! As always, a lot has happened. Last week I shared a little PDF I created – mainly after enough people asked me about it. It’s called the New Growth… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
July 21, 2023

Preparation

Edition #408 WordPress.com launches paid newsletters, the origin of the newsletter and what does the hype from Cannes mean? I had thought with much of the vocal folks of our industry in Cannes, that the news would stop. But, as they say the news never stops. Last weeks note hit a snafu, if you missed it, read up here on Speed.  WordPress launched their Substack competitor or rather features to help with it. You can imagine… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
June 23, 2023

Speed

Edition #407 Would you purposely slow down your customer experience? This weeks note on going 0 to 60 in 4.3 seconds, creator-led marketing and what skill is most in demand. I’m planning a holiday with family, and I do not mind, getting a good rental car. I love driving but live in the city with no car :(. So I’m perusing the options and find the Cupra Formentor, what a name! Formentor. It sounds formidable. And even… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
June 16, 2023

Spatial computing

Edition #406 How our industry can’t help but appreciate how Apple does things, podcasts have been around 20 years! And Twitch pulls back on its new branded content guidelines. Spatial computing. How could I not have a newsletter this week and not mention spatial computing and Vision Pro. You just can’t. Well you can, but too late now. I did like, Facebook tried to land this space, with Meta and metaverse. And Apple comes along, and pulls it… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
June 9, 2023