Ben Young
Ben Young
February 17, 2023

Edition #393

ChatGPT chat drowns out Super Bowl, Netflix branded content and bad digital ads. All this and more in this weeks note.


Can you not send a newsletter this week and only talk about ChatGPT. Ok.

But people are asking because they’re curious, and there’s new lingo and it is potentially exciting. And it is something new to talk about, to look forward, to re-imagine the future.

After this sustained period of things are rough, the future is not that bright. A glimpse of potential change is exciting. Even if a little dystopian in some respects.

The level of chatter even drowned out the regular post Super Bowl chatter!

We’ve featured the GM ad with Will Ferrell interwoven into popular Netflix shows. They used this as a platform to announce their partnership, where Netflix will feature more electric trucks in their tv shows.

An ad, for a partnership, for future tv shows.

A hint at what the branded content future may hold for Netflix. If you are GM, what shows do you want to be in? Why? How do you know if it is successful? How much? How little? All interesting questions.

The other interesting thing, is how, Super Bowl attracts 113m viewers, watching for 3-4 hours. Let’s say 350m hours of viewing. A top Netflix show is doing 51m globally. Sports still holds a huge amount of the media attention pie.

Benedict Evans released his latest report, and put this in for MrBeast, YouTube along tv viewing times, making the argument that he might be one of the biggest shows.

A quick peek at Parrot, puts MrBeast #23 as the most popular Talent worldwide. So it is feasible.

Notable stories this week

Deals/M&A

Campaign of the week

View all 2023 best campaigns.

Smartest commentary

  •  “Trying to compete on efficiency with robots never works, they always win” –Brian Morrissey
  • “It’s no longer about who spends the most (on advertising), It’s about who reaches the most, who engages the most, with the highest efficiency, with superior brand communication that drives growth and value creation.” –Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer.

Datapoints of note

  • [On Roku] Streaming hours originating from the Home Screen menu grew twice as fast as overall platform hours.
  • Fox’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service, Tubi, reached 64 million monthly active users.
  • Digital video viewing to top traditional tv in US this year.

That’s it for this week.


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