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One big thing
The story this week was Google committing to a roadmap to remove third-party cookies within 2 years. This has been an internal battle for them, Google Adsense vs DoubleClick vs Chrome.
Google Adsense is the traditional advertising teams’ at Google, DoubleClick is the more brand solutions and Chrome – obviously their browser. The ads teams want/need the third party cookies but Chrome doesn’t want to lose market share by not keeping up with Firefox and Safari.
Google merged the first two teams, to get 100% alignment. And gave them the challenge of going, find ways to use less data to get the same or better results. Which they have begun to do.
So Chrome rumors have been floating for a while – it’s great to see a confirmation of this happening. At a technical level what this will mean is the browser will play a more active role in managing your privacy. The browser will collect events and pass back anonymously to providers. Rather than your data being shot around everywhere and endlessly.
Sure, workarounds will be found, but with all browsers in alignment on a standardized method – this will become the norm.
Ari Paparo posits “the media mix will likely bifurcate to click-based direct response ads on the one hand, and video-heavy branding ads (with limited KPIs) on the other. There's a lot less room for hybrid "brand direct" spending when neither audience nor results can be clearly measured.”
I largely agree and it will stimulate more content-first executions. It will/does remove the mid-range CPMs which are often filled with retargeting. What I mean by that is, $2-$6 CPMs.
Higher CPMs tend to be brand spend, lower arbitrage and retargeting often covers this middle range. This means higher CPMs can come down for the same inventory.
This will create more opportunities for the promotion of content. It also is where political advertising is even more valuable because it helps fill the range of CPMs.
Notable stories this week
- Hyatt has partnered with Headspace to offer wellness programming and exercises for guests.
- TikTok working on a Snapchat Discover-like feature.
- Peacock was announced, creating endless discussion around whether consumers would pay for ad support.
- ^ LightShed has a good analysis on this pre-announcement, requires a login/account creation though.
- Power, fame, and fortune – a glimpse into Singapore’s lucrative YouTube industry.
- How Bleacher Report is chasing licensing revenue in 2020.
- How CollegeHumor lost its lead.
- Will consumers pay for short-form content?
- More on the potential of Spotify as a podcast advertising powerhouse.
- TikTok will soon help publishers make money on the platform by enabling them to place branded content on it.
- Related, Publishers invade TikTok to court Gen Z.
- [Long read] On the changing role of marketing at Jaguar Land Rover.
Campaign of the week
- J.P. Morgan Asset Management on CNBC with a content series called “Solve It”, where they cover investment topics that range from bonds to yield, retirement to public vs. private markets, and beyond.
- Netflix on The Atlantic with a piece that pushes off of their latest show series, called Messiah. In this article they ask ‘if a Messiah-like figure appeared today, would you follow him?’. An intriguing, thought-provoking, and well-executed article, which ends up putting the onus back on you, the reader, stating that when charismatic leaders rise to power, it says more about us than it does about them.
- Adidas on Highsnobiety celebrates the 50th anniversary of their second most popular shoe, and their most important sneaker collaboration, by sharing its long and convoluted history. An excellent piece of content that really shows how much Adidas’s brand has shaped pop-culture as we’ve come to know it. Can someone get their hands on the pair from the ’70s? Asking for a friend…
Deals/M&A
- ContentIQ was acquired for $73M on revenues of $26m and EBIT of $5.9m.
Smartest commentary
- “Maybe a future where there is less tracking, but it is consistent across all browsers and even all apps, is a better world for ad tech than the balkanized state we currently find ourselves in.” –Ari Paparo, CEO, Beeswax
Thanks,
Ben
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Nudge is built by marketers and aims to serve brands investing in content-based media, across any category, looking to illustrate ROI, generate deep performance insights, and save time.
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