Ben Young
Ben Young
July 6, 2018

I was in two minds about doing a This Week in Native this week – as it is July Fourth here in the US. Which means many of you are reading this from the beach/lakehouse or as we’d say in New Zealand – the bach.

Not everyone is in the US (obviously) but it does make it a slower news week.

The big news – we saw the Acxiom acquisition by IPG for $2.3b. My take, a smart jolt of data service capabilities for IPG and a signal to the market, they have an appetite to evolve. LiveRamp to obtain tech multiples was going to have to be spun out at some point – this is that in reverse.

^ The question is, will that, as a standalone entity, will they now get snapped up? With the view that that stack should be part of someone else’s mix to compete against Google IDs. I would say given the current environment – yes. If Oath spins out, maybe they’ll be a contender.

More below, a general trend in the stories is that we’re seeing less ‘native’ specific, and the language of content/native is merging. You may have noticed that yourself in the newsletter.

Notable stories this week

Deals/M&A

  • IMGN Media raises $6m.
  • Sorrell’s S4 Capital is looking to pick up MediaMonks.
  • Quartz sells to Uzabase. This is interesting, a few things. Comments on the low multiple to revenue ($70-$110m on anticipated $35m revenue), headcount of 215. We know branded content makes up a lot of their business (33% in 2016) and now Concert is also selling it. New entity focused on subscription revenue. I would anticipate layoffs are coming to lean out the business in light of this.

Campaign of the week

Datapoints of note

  • [From us] Email newsletters drive 124% higher attention for travel brands.
  • From a Native study on Viewable vs Non-Viewable bidding strategies. For placements with 40 percent viewability and below, we see a more extreme lift across our network. These placements, which sit at the bottom of the page, are 3.5-times more likely to lead to a conversion than the 70-80 percent viewable placements. In other words, once users are done consuming the content they came for, they are more likely to engage with your brand.
  • Instagram stories is twice as big as Snapchat.

Events

  • [July 12th] ARF’s NATIVExSCIENCE. Native advertising and branded content are approaches often outperforming traditional advertising. How to plan? How to develop? How to measure?
  • Native Institute is hosting Native Days this November. Use code NAIFRIENDBEN to save.

Roles at Nudge: Writer, Developer, Operator.

That’s it for this week.

Ta,

-Ben

For when it’s July 4th but you’ve got content campaigns to report on.
Nudge is a content marketing analytics platform that drives performance for leading brand advertisers and premium publishers.


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