Month: January 2018

If you’re reading the headlines, the bitcoin bubble and crypto craze are having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

On Tuesday Facebook announced it was going to ban ads for coin offerings and crypto couching it as a move to cut down on scams.

Within the 24 hours around the announcement, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission subpoenaed exchanges Bitfinex and Tether, the Securities and Exchange Commission halted an ICO by AriseBank, and South Korea said it found $600 million tied to crypto-related crime.

But at the same time, stock trading app Robinhood announced the launch of commission-free trading of 16 cryptocurrencies on its platform later this month and Square, which had recently made bitcoin buying and selling available to a select number of Square Cash users, expanded the service to its entire user base Wednesday.

The fact is that for anyone that’s serious about their crypto company or their proposed ICO, Facebook ads don’t really matter. The removal of advertising from Facebook will certainly do something to slow these schemes down but there are other ways they’ll be able to get their message out; through Telegram groups — some by invitation only — Internet chat rooms, Reddit. Facebook advertising is clearly just about getting mindshare, said Sid Kalla, co-founder of Turing Group.

“Less technically serious projects might raise less money and thats probably good for the space,” he said. New projects without strong technical merit are coming up and raising a lot of money.” At most, “this would affect regular people that want to invest in ICOs without doing their research. Bitcoin’s value in lieu of the advertising that goes with it has nothing to do with Facebook ads. That’s true of most established cryptocurrencies as well.”

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

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New York magazine is refining its year-old membership program, New York by New York, with a bigger focus on food and drink events.

Launched in late 2016 as “insider access to extraordinary experiences,” New York by New York members got early access to sales at retailers, a newsletter with tips on how to thrive in the city and access to a private Instagram feed (which has since been made public).

There will still be special discount codes and early access to sales at retailers, but more emphasis on exclusive food and drink events, ideally hosted by editors of its Grub Street vertical. Earlier this week, for example, New York by New York members got together to eat an entire pig with food critic Adam Platt and Grub Street editor Alan Sytsma at Gramercy Italian restaurant Maialino.

New York is still selling the membership as a standalone product — it costs $99 for a year or $9.99 per month — but it’s now bundling memberships with other products. For example, it now offers a year of New York by New York plus an all-access subscription to New York magazine (which is being advertised now for $50) for $125.

These and other tweaks come as New York continues to grow its non-advertising revenue, particularly commerce. The magazine said the membership program was profitable in 2017, with just three full-time staffers devoting time to it, but it remains small. The magazine signed up “hundreds” of subscribers during a beta launch in late 2016, but wouldn’t say how many subscribers there are now.

The next challenge is figuring out how to market something New York’s readers are unfamiliar with.  “Honestly, this is the area where we’ve struggled the most,” said Camilla Cho, New York magazine’s director of business development. “I don’t think people are looking to New York by New York for discounts. Part of the goal [for 2018] is to actually learn as much as possible about what it takes to get a recurring revenue stream from your user base.”

During that first year, Cho and Alison Hutchison, an associate manager of business development, whipped up “around 160” offers for members, including VIP ticket packages to hit musical “Hamilton” and a private tour of The Richard Avedon Foundation led by New York’s design editor Wendy Goodman.

Cho will use the responses to those offers to make the program more structured. For example, food and drink events were a hit, so Hutchison is now responsible for putting together at least one exclusive food event per month.

The hope is that having recurring series will make it easier to communicate the program’s value to potential subscribers and include sales and marketing more. Last year, only one New York by New York event, a conversation between Goodman and the CEO of luxury designer Van Cleef & Arpels, secured a sponsorship, as part of a broader advertising buy across other parts of the organization.

The program’s team will now have regular meetings with editorial, sales and marketing to monetize and promote events. Some editors from New York’s verticals will have to participate in membership programs on a quarterly basis.

Along with the change in focus, the program also will get new marketing creative to reflect the focus on food events. Initial tests across a number of promotional channels, including Facebook, print ads in its magazine, newsletters and in-person promotion at events, haven’t yielded satisfactory results in sign-ups.

“What we need to do is refresh our market positioning, especially if we’re not getting the numbers we want,” Cho said.

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Facebook’s dominance in digital advertising powered another surge in quarterly profit, though it said users were starting to shave back their time on its platform as it tries to address critics claims that the social network has harmful effects.

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Meredith closed its acquisition of Time Inc. Wednesday to create a media company with 174 million digital US unique visitors – not far behind Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. Meredith will triple its digital revenue by acquiring Time Inc., with projected digital revenue this year of $700 million. Digital will contribute 30% to overall… Continue reading »

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Microsoft Corp. took a $13.8 billion charge related to the new U.S. tax law but reported significant growth in its cloud operations, the business fueling the company’s resurgence.

Qualcomm Inc. entered into an expanded deal with one of its biggest customers and beat revenue estimates in its latest quarter even as it swung to a deep loss.

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Pandora said Wednesday it would shift resources and savings by investing in ad tech. The music streaming platform, which has fallen behind competitors in developing programmatic advertising solutions for buyers, said it will redeploy staff and to build ad tech and mar tech and expand into non-music content. Pandora declined to comment further. Read the… Continue reading »

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YouTube is expanding its Super Bowl playbook this year. For its 11th annual AdBlitz, its hub of Super Bowl-related content where brands advertising with Google can post their spots for increased engagement and a broader audience, YouTube is rolling out a few new ad products for marketers looking to re-engage with viewers on their second…

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Traffic is down at Facebook. It’s a new look for the platform, which has done almost nothing but grow quarter over quarter and year over year. Changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm to deprioritize viral video in Q4 reduced time spent on the platform by around 50 million hours a day. Daily active users in… Continue reading »

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