Challenging Times

Edition #397

On the challenging market, new content studios, payment for AI to use content in its models and the latest from MacPac.

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I saw this tweet earlier in the week, MORGAN STANLEY: what happens when one or more of these five things are happening?

MORGAN STANLEY: what happens when one or more of these five things are happening?

1) $SPX forward earnings declining
2) yield curve inverted
3) Unemployment below avg
4) Mfg PMIs < 50
5) 40% of banks tightening lending standards.

“All five are in place today, which is rare.” pic.twitter.com/BFfojeMOpf

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) March 21, 2023

Then acknowledging, that each of these was happening right now. And I think there’s a case that that is happening across the marketing and media landscape. It’s not just one pressure point happening, it’s a perfect storm of competing factors, all making for a challenging environment.

1. Interest rates, impacting the consumer and then the advertising budgets associated.
2. Decreased valuations, impacting investment and outlook for private companies.
3. Margin pressure, impacting investment and team sizes.

These forces have reduced teams at agencies, reduced budgets, forced teams to make budgets go further, focus on the mission critical items and increased team turnover.

And then ‘potential’ disruption from AI, I joked that the advertising industry is tired of being the first disrupted by advancements in technology.

It’s not unfair to acknowledge these challenges and that it is a challenging environment. But teams feel resilient and have the right tools to face these.

We get the opportunity to use the skills we’ve all learnt and find ways to work within this, it’s what the industry always has done and will do.

Notable stories this week

• Why YouTube subscriber counts have become an unreliable ’vanity metric’ in the era of short video.
• 5 best Snap features for creators to earn money.
• Creator funds are even more bs that we realized.
• LinkedIn releases new pages features for B2B marketers.
• With Firefly, Adobe gets into the generative AI game.
• ABInBev is launching an entertainment division with help from Oscar-winning producer Michael Sugar in a push to reach consumers who don’t watch ads.
• Marc Maron on how he works with sponsors of his iconic ‘WTF’ podcast.
• Media schadenfreude.
• Creative attention even more important in s post-ATT world.
• TikTok’s popularity complicates possible US ban.
• TheSkimm launches in-house creative agency SKM Labs. And HelloSunshine also launches their in-house agency – Solar. And Paramount launches theirs in ANZ.
• How to defend your brand marketing budget in a downturn.
• Joy Robins named Global Chief Advertising Officer of NYTimes.
• Lush Cosmetics slashes ad spend on Google as part of Big Tech cuts.
• Gap has quietly dissolved its advertising business.
• Meta, Snapchat, Twitter layoffs spell trouble for agency relationships.
• Future nabs Keith Hernandez. OpenWeb appoints Hair Sasson as President.
• Data deluge: businesses struggle with TMI.
• Marketers adapt to serve niche communities as culture fragments.
• Hidden impacts of Pixel Tracking from the FTC.
• Netflix could up the ante for advertisers as it explores solution to its ad tech conundrum.
• TikTok’s suggested search problem.
• BuzzFeed is not about to go out of business.
• [Smart take] What we’re telling publishers about the AI content apocalypse.
• On the multi-armed bandit problem.

Deals/M&A

• WPP acquires data-driven influencer marketing agency Goat.
• Loupe raised $3m in seed funding.
• Dotdash Meredith pens Pinterest partnership, joining Condé Nast and Tastemade.
• Inside the demise of Vice, from turning away a $3.5b Disney offer.

Campaign of the week

• Macpac, this is a bit precarious. Love this. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkZ6rbQkFEo

View all 2023 best campaigns.

Smartest commentary

• “The near-term opportunity for the publishers who can afford it (individually or as part of some sort of industry-level consortium) will be to hammer out pricing models for the information that powers the AI products (that will only increase in usage) with the tech giants who are large enough to have money to share and can’t risk falling afoul of future law or lawsuits.” –Joel Johnson
• “We generally only advertise stuff that makes sense to me, or stuff I believe in, or I feel is useful. The listeners trust our choice of advertisers and are willing to engage with them because of how we vet those advertisers in relation to what I’m comfortable with.” –Marc Maron

Datapoints of note

• According to a McKinsey survey of more than 1,300 B2B leaders, about two thirds are planning to increase their investment in growth analytics and expect that the additional investment will drive accelerated profit growth over the next several years.
• Amazon Fire TV crosses 200m devices sold.
• Mastodon now has more than 10m accounts.
• 33% of business leaders said they can’t generate meaningful insights from their data and 30% said they were overwhelmed by the sheer volume. 

That’s it for this week.