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Edition #481
Which will win, metrics vs models. Bluesky monetization and that Adalytics report.
This is neat, Graze is helping Bluesky monetize their feeds but also build your own social network in a way. Simple, good execution, I should try out the ad product.
Late last week we also had the latest Adalytics report drop, leading to a raft of Friday night messages, from synopsis, cause, who was impacted etc. Not cool to see.
Neither were some of the takes on Twitter disparaging the source, reports like this & the Deepsee one the week before, are market improving functions.
Programmatic is so vast, there are certain to be areas where it isn’t working as expected. Analysis like this, helps improve the whole eco-system. So even if you weren’t implicated, you may have now avoided a future headache because of this awareness.
The other bubbling current thought is on metrics vs models. Metrics as in, are there new metrics (like attention) which we should use to buy or optimize to quality. Or does this get solved by models? As in predictive models to optimize the media, trained on outcome/private data.
At this point in time, it’s unclear which will win, but both are racing for adoption in the market. It is also feasible both will get a foothold in the industry, but one will probably get wider adoption.
What do you think?
Notable stories this week
- BuzzFeed to launch new social media platform called BF Island.
- Smart take] Consumer-Owned Advertising.
- Is Attention the measurement ‘silver bullet’.
- TikTok quietly disappears from smart TVs.
- Yahoo debuts first consumer ad campaign in years.
- The privacy shuffle.
- Perplexity’s Super Bowl ‘tweet’ increased app installs by 50%.
- This ad-tech company is powering surveillance of US military personnel.
- Amazon, Google and verification vendors among ad tech cohort under fire from U.S. senators over child safety shortcomings.
- Spotify expects to see programmatic ads scale in 2026.
- Custom feed builder Graze is building a business on Bluesky.
- AI-Generated slop is already in your public library.
- TripleLift names Dave Helmreich as new CEO.
- BuzzFeed the Anti-SNARF Manifesto.
Deals/M&A
- Kevel acquires Nexta.
- Slow is launching their first Creator Fund.
- DoubleVerify invests $1m in FirstPartyCapital.
Campaign of the week
- Charter with Time Inc on the future of work.
- ^ Interesting execution, where the content hub stimulates sign ups to the newsletter, which itself is a separate business/community. The newsletter CTA sitting directly within Times environment.
View all 2024 best campaigns.
Smartest commentary
- “Imagine a world where the platforms you love shared in the economics of advertising with you. Consumer-owned advertising creates a win-win-win model for advertisers, publishers, and consumers.” –Jeff Becker.
Datapoints of note
- Google’s AI Overviews reduced a publishers CTR from 4% to 0.6% in this anecdotal example.
- Record 127.7m watched Super Bowl LIX.
- Kara Swisher & Prof Galloways podcast makes about $2.5m/year and generates $10m of revenue for Vox.
- Substack has at least 52 writers making $500k/year.
Events
- Native Advertising Institute is holding their first US based event in April.
View all 2024 datapoints of note.
That’s it for this week.
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