New celebrity

Microsoft brought in $10 billion in ad revenue in the last 12 months. For a combined business that is bigger than Snap & Twitter combined.

NEW: @Microsoft brought in $10 billion+ in ad revenue in last 12 months (ex TAC), which includes LinkedIn
— Comes amid a renewed ad push from the tech firm
— Microsoft acquired ATT’s addressable ad biz Xandr last year
— $MSFT ad biz last year bigger than Snap, Twitter combined

— Sara Fischer (@sarafischer) January 25, 2022

Yet, what ad options do they have? The first you know of, is LinkedIn. Then Bing Ads, and Search/News advertising revenue was up 32%. LinkedIn itself was up 23% YOY with usage of Linkedup up 22%.

Microsoft also recently bought Xandr “we will bring to market new advertising solutions that combine our deep audience understanding and customer base with Xandr’s large-scale data-driven platforms.“

Then you have their reach with Xbox. So if you were to sum it up, they reach consumers through their browser on Windows, news properties, LinkedIn, search and gaming.

Microsoft shared with with Digiday, “Our greater ambition is to create a trusted, free and open web where everyone can thrive – customers, advertisers, publishers and platforms alike – while adhering deeply to our commitment to strong data governance and consumer privacy practices.”

That’s a vision many of us can sign up.

• What Cameo knows about celebrity.
• Taboola automates personalized homepages with Homepage For You.
• Cheddar founder Jon Steinberg steps down to pursue next venture.
• Marketers have been getting it wrong on long-form video. Strong agree.
• Creators are calling out TikTok for its low payouts.
• Swapstack launches a free Tip Jar for creators.
• Video is now in beta on Substack.
• Twitter improves its Site Visit Optimization product.
• What’s happened to all those Spotify podcast partnerships which were announced?
• Facebook dives into NFT digital collectibles craze.
• Microsoft’s ad revenue hit $10b and it’s investing – is it a sleeping giant about to wake?
• Metaverse marketing – everything brands need to know about virtual worlds.
• Media companies, testing alternative measurement options, are loosening Nielsen’s grip on the ecosystem.
• LG Ad Solutions launches guaranteed outcome program.
• Adtech veteran Brian O’Kelley is back with a new venture that wants to reduce the carbon emissions produced by digital ads.
• Amazon is aggressively growing its advertising business.

Deals/M&A

• Stripe and Spotify partner to help creators easily monetize subscription content.

Campaign of the Week

• Genius & Microsoft Surface, New Music Friday.

• “Cameo may look like a celebrity-soaked gimmick, a novelty, but its founders have gleaned something new about what it means to be both a celebrity and a fan in the 21st century.” –Tom Faber, FT
• Hat tip @faris

Datapoints of note

• [On Cameo] In 2019, 30,000 celebrities on the platform recorded 350,000 videos. In 2020, 40,000 recorded more than a million videos. In 2021 the number of celebrities surpassed 50,000.

That’s it for this week.