Ben Young
Ben Young
March 1, 2024

Edition #438

LVMH launches a brand entertainment division, adtech surveillance, AI rights on platforms.


This week Wired has a couple of stories about Adtech being used to triangulate folks and a small Iowa newspapers domain being acquired and hijacked with AI content. The former capitalizing on the excess data from every ad auction. Turns out even if you lost the auction you could still get the data, so firms have packaged this up and sold it. It could even be used to see how Putins entourage was moving!

Probably a good idea to reset your advertising id when traveling I guess?

We also shared more on the Larry rule over on the analytics note.

I was reviewing some of the newsletter data, and in general most don’t click, and those that do, click 5-7 links. We try to get the crucial info into each bullet point, so you don’t have to click unless you want to dive in more. We also are a bit tighter on if folks aren’t opening, to opt them out. We do know from asking readers, that not everyone reads every edition so are attune to that.

The chat this week has been how busy it still is, like an extension of Q4 through to Q1, which is good! Am curious to see how it sets up for the year. Are you seeing the same?

Are you seeing the same?

We also have been busy at Nudge with new products in the labs, I’d love to share them with you, if you’ve got 10-15 minutes just send me a quick note with some times (or your calendly) and I’ll try align on some time to share. 

Notable stories this week

  • LVMH launches brand entertainment division.
  • The first newsletter content house?
  • Meet the Amazon ‘influencers’ making money off everything they own.
  • How a small Iowa newspapers website became an AI-generated clickbait factory.
  • Vice to lay off hundreds and stop publishing on website.
  • Google tests removing the news tab from search results.
  • Tumblr and WordPress to sell users data to train AI tools.
  • Google hit with a $2.3b lawsuit by Axel Springer, other media groups.
  • People want to know when AI is used in Ads, research confirms.
  • How the Pentagon learned to use targeted ads to find its targets – and Vladimir Putin.
  • Why agencies are obsessed with pitching on process instead of talent.
  • Team IAB or Team Google?
  • Meta’s layoffs continue to impact advertisers as the company replaces account team members with AI.
  • Google is paying publishers to test an unreleased Gen AI platform.

Deals/M&A

Campaign of the week

View all 2024 best campaigns.

Smartest commentary

  •  “I increasingly suspect that none of the people in charge of these chatbots understand what they’re for or what we’re supposed to do with them, either.” Max Read.
  • 😂

Datapoints of note

  • This study found that one in four consumers noticed the AI disclosures, resulting in a 47% increase in ad appeal, a 73% rise in ad trustworthiness and a 96% jump in overall brand trust.
  • ^ From the same: 72% of consumers believe that AI makes it challenging to discern which content is genuinely authentic. And 61% of consumers already assume that AI is used in ads, although they are uncertain about how to identify it.
  • Threads session time has near doubled to 6 minutes.
  • Spotify paid out $9b to the music industry in 2023. Nearly half was to independent artists.
  • Substack says it now has more than 3 million paid subscriptions.
  • Arc Search for iPhone passed 512k users, 102k DAUs.
  • A majority of respondents stated that at least 40% of campaigns will be run on CTV in the next 24 months.
  • Drive to Survive first three day viewing is down 30% compared to last year.
  • Twitter now has 1 million job positions listed.

View all 2024 datapoints of note.

That’s it for this week.


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