Why Web3

Next week we’re partnering with the Content Writing Jobs newsletter, a great place to post jobs but also if you’re looking for a new gig.

One big thing

Why are marketers flocking to Web3? And tokens? It’s what we always do. We love innovation. New ways of trying to connect. And there are now more of us! If you look up content marketing as a role on LinkedIn last year, there were 5m content marketers, this year, 6.7m!

So we have a lot of new marketers, playing with the new shiny toys, telling everyone about it. When you think about it like that, it’s not surprising ha.

• Google Analytics eliminated bounce rate measurement.
• Identifying sponsored content in news sites with machine learning.
• Growth marketing experts survey: How would you spend a $25k budget in Q1 2022?
• Netflix to release top 10 reports weekly for English and non-english tv & films. You can see them here.
• Newsletter start up Substack hits 1m subscribers.
• A good newsletter exit strategy is hard to find.
• Facebook Journalism Project kicks in another $1m for Meta Branded Content Project.
• The end of “click to subscribe, call to cancel”? One of the news industry’s favorite retention tactics is illegal, FTC says.
• BuzzFeed & Yahoo partner to share ad technology, collaborate on branded content and immersive experiences.
• [Long read] Web3, Crypto & Learning.
• [Long read] The creator economy.

Deals/M&A

• Conductor raises $150m at $525m valuation to build out its search-based, organic marketing technology.
• MoneyLion acquires Malka Media.
• Vox acquires Criminal Productions to expand their narrative audio and true crime podcasts.

Campaign of the Week

• Tell us about your little one and we’ll recommend a learning gift they’ll love. Interactive quiz with a gift recommendation at the end. BuzzFeed + Osmo.

• “CONTENT DRIVES STREAMING.. it is honestly that simple — if you go all in, subs follow” –Rich Greenfield, Lightshed

Datapoints of note

• Substack has over 1m paid subscribers across its newsletters.
• 50% of all podcasts only have 29 downloads within 7 days of posting.
• [TikTok] Authenticity on the platform is associated with feelings of creativity, inspiration and uniqueness. In fact, 48% of TikTok users see the platform as ‘joyful’ compared to 30% for social media platforms.
• A third (34%) of marketers don’t trust the data they are given to inform campaigns. A number that rises to 41% among their data analyst colleagues—posing a new challenge for the C-suite charged with driving marketing results. Yet, the very same divide deepens at the leadership level—with 51% of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) & Chief Data Officers (CDOs) lacking trust in the data compared to 34% of CMOs.

That’s it for this week.