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Edition #482
Cold plunges, bug bounties & cross platform measurement.
Over New Years, I had the pleasure to stop in Oslo, is it even a city right? The harbour was all frozen over, and dotted around the harbour are these floating havens of warmth. Wood fired saunas. Naturally I had to.
After securing a spot, my wife and some friends went along. A two hour slot, gets you a spot in the sauna, stoke it as you wish, and then, if you dare, go dunk yourself in the harbour. Now it’s slippery, the walkway has grit and salt on it, but you’re in bare feet, go as fast you allow, then down the steps, and under and back out. The cold hits you hard, the only thought you have, is get out. Yet after 10 minutes back in the sauna, here we go again. Wonderful.
But what does this have to do this weeks newsletter? Well in terms of attribution, it kind of feels like this. US ad buyers have cross platform measurement at the top of their priorities again. I mean, that is a good thing. But they’re about to go dunk in the ice again. And go, what really mattered is did it shift the needle for us. What was that business outcome again, and go back there. And start again.
Not that cross platform measurement shouldn’t be something on the todo list. But I’d argue, for most brands, unless you’re spending hundreds of millions on a single brand. It’s probably best focused elsewhere…
And/or an enduring approach, is to look at post-click measurement. Now of course, not all campaigns are to the click, but you just compare those clicks against similar campaigns, to get relative value.
Brand Campaign 1 from new platform, drives 15 seconds of attention, 65% scroll.
Brand Campaign 2 from regular platform, drives 23 seconds of attention, 75% scroll.
Then you dive into, why is the second driving nearly 50% more engagement. Now this isn’t a holistic measure of performance, but it is something you could do 10 years ago, 5 years ago and can do in the future. Or build an internal scorecard, of performance.
Or, models, which is a smarter extension of your internal scorecard.
I also turned a tweet into a post for AdExchanger, on the potential for bug bounties to improve the overall ad ecosystem. Love if you’d read it and share your thoughts. Always fun to do a piece, slightly out of field.
Notable stories this week
- Linkedin is a weird, workaholic wasteland — and a total gold mine for Microsoft.
- [From me] How bug bounties can transform ad tech.
- Substack now lets creators monetize videos and post them directly from its app.
- Brand, not stirred: Now that the James Bond series is controlled by Amazon MGM, is it set to become… content?
- Not every podcaster is ready for video.
- Stop the scroll. How to win at Facebook now.
- Criteo open sources some of their data to build models on.
- Google is giving buyers thousands in ad credits to spend on AI-powered Demand Gen.
- Spotify is booming except for its ad business.
- Amazon Ads to change URL transparency and reporting after high-profile CSAM report from Adalytics.
- As Facebook abandons fact-checking, it’s also offering bonuses for viral content.
- Marketers chase better measurement across channels.
- Two AI agents talking to one another, swap to compressed audio signal.
- What Lush has learned from three years of being mostly offline.
- The dream of a perfect outcomes optimization system.
- Liner a South Korean AI search engine has been testing click ads in the US.
- How news publishers are fighting back against ‘broken’ brand-safety tools.
- Dow Jones expands AI marketplace to nearly 5,000 publishers.
- Meta to remove livestreams after 30 days.
- Netflix is the cheapest streaming platform per hour of use.
- LinkedIn launches its sown Conversion API.
- X driving BlueSky’s new users.
- Taboola targets a $55b opportunity as it moves beyond content recommendation widgets. And partners with Line.
- Vox has no exit plan.
Deals/M&A
- DoubleVerify to acquire Rockerbox in $85m deal.
Campaign of the week
- 8 of the best winter experiences to have in Iceland.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “Netflix collects the smallest amount of revenue per hour spent viewing. While we are paying $0.83 per hour for Paramount+, we are spending just $0.36 per hour on Netflix.” –Lucas Shaw.
Datapoints of note
- WBD forecasts 150m subscribers by end of 2026.
- Linkedin still gets 10-11m visitors/day in the weekend.
- 64% of US ad buyers are focused on cross-platform measurement.
- Walmart’s ad business grew to $4.4b.
- The most popular YouTube video is Baby Shark with 15.6b views, resulting in the video receiving an estimated $37m in ad revenue.
Events
- Native Advertising Institute is holding their first US based event in April.
- Agency Breakfast, March 18th.
View all 2024 datapoints of note.
That’s it for this week.
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