Ben Young
Ben Young
February 1, 2019

Notable stories this week

  • Facebook & Google market research. This does raise the threat of being disintermediated by the operating system itself, what happens if Apple bans the app? Apparently Facebook has prepared for such a scenario (shout out to @ow for pointing this out). Very curious turn of events, they’re playing with fire. I suspect there is a research firm who recruits users for this kind of research, that their playbook is somehow involved, given both Google & Facebook were using the same methodology. That being said, they would both have known that it’s in breach of the policy.
  • Oh, and chaos ensued inside Facebook as staff couldn’t access genuinely needed internal apps.
  • The Ringer podcast revenue exceeded $15m in 2018. And related, Axios turned over $25m in 2018.
  • Consumers are doing everything they can to avoid ads. Here’s how P&G, is finding a way around that.
  • [Long read] The BuzzFeed Lesson via Stratechery. I’d forgotten that back in 2015, Ben wrote why BuzzFeed [was] the most important news organization in the world. And related, BuzzFeed charts a path to a sustainable business.
  • Twitter is trying to align with publishers interests in growing their business relationships.
  • Reddit launches CPC ads.
  • BuzzFeed, Vice and Group Nine form a measurement alliance. Seeking quantification of their social audiences.
  • TripleLift also adopts TTD’s unified ID.
  • TikTok is quietly testing ads.
  • Google is testing showing text ads on YouTube.
  • A call to action for improving branded content.

Deals/M&A

  • Knotch raises $20m from NEA. Well done to Anda and the team.

Campaign of the week

Hulu, screen ads whilst pausing video

Datapoints of note

Events

That’s it, Happy Friday.

-Ben

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