Month: March 2021

“The word menopause, to many, means mad and murderous,” said Jane Austin, owner of communications and content agency Persuasion Communications. “For traditional CEOs — male and female — it indicates a drain on resources. We need to work toward finding a language of kindness and tolerance.”

Austin has been frustrated with how colleagues and clients belittled her menopause symptoms like hot flushes, fatigue and “brain fog.” She even briefly considered taking a “back seat” role in her business to avoid feeling embarrassed and mistreated for her symptoms.

“I was fired by a client when I was in my early 40s because they felt I was too old. So with this prevalent ageism, it’s hardly a surprise women fear talking about menopause. Men don’t understand that the middle-aged women they work with might be struggling to manage massive psychological and physiological changes,” said Austin.

It was a client contact: chief commercial officer Vicki Maguire at Havas London, who helped her regain her confidence.

“You’re almost made to feel like you’re past it in an industry that prizes bright young things and you feel like you’re competing with women half your age, which is horrible as I want to support younger women, not compete with them,” said Austin.

If companies are serious about putting more women in senior roles and on their advisory boards, they need to support female staff through menopause, she added. “The creative industries can’t afford to lose experienced middle-aged women at the top of their game, particularly when it still has a diversity and gender pay gap problem,” added Austin.

In the U.S., there are thought to be around 61 million female workers aged over 50 years old. Many of them may experience menopause symptoms — which include anxiety, difficulty sleeping and joint pain — as they typically occur between the ages 45 and 55 years old, according to Harvard Business Review. Around 84% of them have reportedly said menopausal symptoms are disruptive to their lives.

While in the U.K. 90% of U.K. businesses don’t offer specific menopause support, and a further 70% of women in an unrelated study feel their menopause-related anxiety has worsened during the pandemic.

Katie Taylor, a PR and marketing manager, felt compelled to leave three jobs due to menopause symptoms like anxiety, depression and fatigue, and people’s ignorance around how to accommodate and support her through them in the workplace. “There’s a massive need for menopause policies, and they should just become a natural part of any company’s HR package,” she said.

Taylor has since set up The Latte Lounge, an international advice support network for women over 40, which is now fielding demand from companies to help develop their staff benefits, from menopause guidelines to group clinics with specialist doctors.

Telecoms firm Vodafone estimates that menopause currently affects around 15% of its 100,000 employees worldwide. The business has rolled out a more supportive global menopause policy that includes extra leave, flexible working and wider training and awareness programs after its research revealed 62% of its female staff with symptoms said it negatively affects them at work and they need more support. 

Channel 4 was similarly motivated to help the 13% of its female workforce who are aged over 45 years old. The broadcaster launched its first menopause policy in 2019 — the first in the U.K. media industry to do so. Since then, 10% of its female employees have used or are planning to use the policy and 78% of its staff have said they feel better about the company as a place to work as a result, according to the broadcaster.

“Eventually they [menopause policies] will be like parental leave, where every company will have to have them,” added Emma Guy, sales director at marketing agency Aqueous Digital, whose personal struggles with menopause and subsequent awkwardness in the workplace led her to write a book and website aimed at supporting women.

For affected women, the moves shine a light not just on hope for a future where menopause is no longer stigmatized, but on how much still needs to change. For instance, both Guy and Taylor believe menopause awareness should start at secondary school for all students.

“They learn about pregnancy, and how to put a condom on a penis, so why shouldn’t they learn about menopause? I think this greater level of education and understanding will have a positive impact on the workplace,” said Guy.

From a workplace perspective, the wheels are now at least in motion. “We really do need to rip the plaster off,” said Helen Matthews, chief people officer at Ogilvy. “It’s a big piece of work that needs tackling.”

Dubbed the Advocates of Capture program, it could be likened to an in-house creative agency, in which about a dozen creators and influencers are tasked with regularly creating content to support Reef’s marketing channels including across social media, Reef.com and newsletters. It’s a move that has slashed production costs by a third, according to Jen Wilson, senior director of brand marketing at Reef.

“What started out as a business need to fill content, turned into our influencers [program],” Wilson said. “And then beyond that, we spiraled it into an actual content stream for social and so on.”

Like other brands, the pandemic pushed Reef to explore alternative media strategies as content production costs skyrocketed with new Covid-19 precautions, according to Wilson. With travel restrictions limiting filming and photography capabilities, the surf brand turned to influencers, who would produce content from wherever they were at a fraction of the cost of what a manufactured studio shoot would cost.

“It’s been way more flexible and so fast,” Wilson said. “It’s been so easy to say we’ve pulled this product or this product has moved around, go shoot, come back, we’re done.”

Even in a post-pandemic society, Wilson said the brand will continue to host the program.

Advocates of Capture officially launched at the top of 2021, wrapping up a beta version that ran through most of 2020. Currently, the program has 13 content creators with follower counts ranging from less than 3,000 up to nearly 250,000. The group is made up of photographers, videographers, motion graphic designers and other visual artists who act as Reef brand ambassadors.

Per Wilson, influencers who sign on are given a Reef branded photography case to jump-start content creation, which is then posted to their own social media channels — influencer-style — and used across Reef’s marketing channels.

“Basically, we’re going to tell you what you need to do and then we want you to bring it to life in your own way because that’s why you’re here,” she said. “You are a creator in your own right.”

Rather than traditional influencers or celebrities, who may juggle work with several brands simultaneously, the Advocates of Capture are steeped in the Reef brand, per Wilson. These creators act as brand ambassadors or an extension of the surf footwear brand. Reef has worked with influencer programs in the past, but this team “is by far the best way that we’ve used influencers or content creators in the different ways that we’ve tried.”

As for payment, each influencer is paid a retainer for the year to account for content production, influencer posts and other collaborative measures. That money comes from Reef’s creative budget, which was formerly dedicated to major shoots and content production. The brand has saved in production overhead costs, freeing up media dollars to go toward other initiatives, Wilson said.

“We were able to reallocate those dollars to paid media where we would be supporting the content they make for our product campaigns and ultimately driving more revenue for the business,” she said in an email.

Currently, nearly half of Reef’s digital media budget goes to paid search and social media, per Wilson. Over the last year, the team has carved out 5% of its digital media budget to go toward experimental measures, such as text message-based marketing and connected television, to diversify its media spend. Wilson declined to outline specific numbers but said Reef plans to significantly increase its digital media budget parallel to its online sales and e-commerce.

Reef’s work with influencers makes sense, according to Brandon Brown, CEO and co-founder of the influencer marketing platform GRIN, who noted that even prior to the pandemic, manufactured studio shoots were on the decline with user-generated content on the rise as consumers look for brand authenticity.

“Content produced in an old-fashioned way isn’t optimized for social, is expensive, and has a long turnaround time,” Brown said in an email. “On the flip side, influencer-created content or UGC is generally free of overhead, can be done at scale and a higher volume, and is faster to create.”

On the other side of the pandemic, with vaccine rollout and the world opening once again, Brown predicts working with influencers will continue to be an industry standard and “the cornerstone of a modern-brand customer relationship.”

“Just because travel is now on the horizon doesn’t mean the industry should move backward,” he said via email.

In fact, with short-form video platforms like TikTok gaining popularity throughout the pandemic, it may be a sign that consumers want influencers and user-generated content that’s raw and unfiltered, said Sheryl Teo, founder of Popcorn Growth marketing agency.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed our way of life, including the way we consume content,” Teo said in an email. “Short-form, authentic, home-style video content is here to stay.”

By December, Njau was convinced the changes would be detrimental to her business. A former lawyer, she complained to the Federal Trade Commission’s Technology Enforcement division and also suggested to members of the Leaders Network, a private Facebook group for small business owners with 1,300 members, that they might do the same. An investigation by that very FTC division led to the agency’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Facebook which the company hopes to have dismissed.

In a highly anticipated change expected to happen this spring, Apple will require apps like Facebook to get people’s express permission allowing them to track individuals across other apps. Njau said she worries that after Apple flips the switch, she will have a harder time reaching Apple users. “I want to be able to be given a chance to grow. I don’t want my cost of acquisition to go up,” said Njau, who budgets $100 per day for Facebook ads — way up from the $250 per month she spent last year.

A few days before Njau made her appeal to the Leaders Network in December, Facebook began running a series of full-page ads in national newspapers. The ads claimed that small businesses were worried about the impending Apple change. “Many in the small businesses community have shared concerns about Apple’s forced software update which will limit businesses’ ability to run personalized ads and reach their customers effectively,” stated the ads, which promoted Facebook’s #SpeakUpForSmall campaign page. “We stand with you,” Facebook assured. Apple did not respond to a request for comment on Facebook’s campaign by press time.

When Digiday asked Facebook about the campaign, the company suggested an interview with Njau, who has received a $2,500 grant and $1,500 in ad credits from Facebook and was featured in a recent Facebook spot touting the benefits of personalized ads. She said the only place she advertises her line of African print luggage and handbags is on Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram. In addition to selling her products on her e-commerce site, she offers them in a Facebook shop. Njau said she was not paid by Facebook to support its anti-Apple efforts.

Apple’s changes will affect any business accustomed to targeting ads on Facebook to people who have visited their websites or measuring whether someone who saw a business’s ad on Facebook purchased a product or service from that business outside of Facebook. Depending on the portion of Apple users who opt-out from tracking by Facebook and other app providers, there could be significant gaps in the information that businesses use to decide how much money to spend on Facebook ads.

As larger digital advertisers and app publishers brace for potential fallout if Apple users opt out en masse from cross-app tracking, Facebook has tried to convince the world that the millions of small businesses on Facebook are equally concerned or should be. But whether small business owners are actually worried about Apple’s tracking update — or even cognizant of it — might depend on how reliant they are on Facebook.

A codependent relationship

“Facebook is in the business of small business,” wrote Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg last year when unveiling the company’s State of Small Business Report. Indeed, Facebook has actively courted small businesses for at least a decade. The company in 2011 announced a partnership with the National Federation of Independent Business and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to distribute up to $10 million in ad credits to small businesses. As pandemic lockdowns struck small businesses in 2020, the company made $100 million in grants available to them, $40 million of which was reserved for the U.S.

Combined with those free ad trials, grants and tools tailored specifically to small businesses, the ease of Facebook’s self-serve ad system and narrow targeting options have hooked lots of entrepreneurs who never had an online presence until they created a Facebook page. Last July when big brands boycotted Facebook, smaller businesses stayed, helping Facebook stay afloat. Davis Jones, managing director of media services at The Many told Digiday at the time, “We have clients where their whole business is Facebook and taking a month off would decimate them.” 

But it’s a codependent relationship. According to Deutsche Bank, 76% of ad spending on Facebook’s platform as of April 2020 came from performance advertisers, many of which are assumed to be small businesses. Today there are 200 million businesses on Facebook globally, 10 million of which actively advertise there, according to Facebook, which does not break out the number of small businesses on the platform.

Ironically, despite all its blustering, Apple’s tracking limitations could actually work in Facebook’s favor if it pushes more businesses to do as Njau has by setting up Facebook shops to sell their products and services directly on the platform. In a March 2021 discussion in venture capital investor Josh Constine’s PressClub Clubhouse room, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “I think it’s possible that we may even be in a stronger position if Apple’s changes encourage more businesses to conduct commerce on our platforms, by making it harder for them to basically use their data in order to find the customers that would want to use their products outside of our platforms.”

‘Amplifying our voices’

BuzzFeed reported some Facebook employees questioned what seemed like a ploy by Facebook to use small businesses as pawns to propel its own profit-driven motives, while simultaneously pitting a competitor against small businesses — the heart and soul of an American economy already hurt by the pandemic. “I don’t think they’re using us [small businesses]. I think they’re amplifying our voices,” said Njau regarding Facebook’s Apple message.

“When we first heard about [Apple’s tracking update], my stomach sank,” said Monique Wilsondebriano, who with her husband runs burger marinade and sauce maker Charleston Gourmet Burger. “I volunteered to help spread the word,” she said. Wilsondebriano is another small business owner Facebook suggested Digiday talk to for this story; she and Njau are the only two people interviewed for this story whom Facebook introduced.

Unlike some business owners, Wilsondebriano said she didn’t hear about the impending Apple change first via Facebook, but rather through various marketing newsletters and groups. “We’re terrified this could disrupt everything,” she told Digiday. Her company’s sales projections are directly linked to the amount of money they spend on Facebook ads, which helps forecast the amount of sauce ingredients and supplies they’ll need in stock. “Right now, if we run an ad, we can do projections,” said Wilsondebriano.

Wilsondebriano considers herself to be in Facebook’s inner circle of small business owners. Charleston Gourmet Burger has received grant money from Facebook and is part of its Small Business Council, a select group of around 60 businesses Facebook taps to help improve its entrepreneur-aimed tools. Wilsondebriano said she finds it disheartening to know that people think Facebook has an ulterior motive in its campaign targeting Apple. “We also do have a relationship with working with Facebook,” she said.

Outside the inner circle

But not every small business gets the special treatment Njau and Wilsondebriano have received from Facebook. In 2018 Facebook blocked ads depicting people wearing apparel made by Slick Chicks, which makes adaptive intimates for people with disabilities or limited mobility. The social platform even prohibited links out to the small business’s website for a period of a few weeks. Rather than responding to Slick Chicks’ inquiries about the ban in a personal manner, Facebook sent only automated notifications about the ads violating its community standards, according to Helya Mohammadian, CEO and founder of Slick Chicks. “It was really shocking as a small business who they claim to be looking after,” she said.

Since then, the brand has shifted more than 50% of the money it had been spending on Facebook elsewhere, primarily to Google, Mohammadian said. She told Digiday she recognizes that Apple’s opt-out notice is likely to affect her company’s ability to target people with ads and to measure the results of her campaigns, but she commended the decision as one that benefits the privacy of her customers. “We know that we might lose some data and analytics in Facebook, but we look at it as something that’s positive for the consumer,” Mohammadian said. Facebook declined to comment about Slick Chicks and its experience on the platform.

Some tech industry observers and privacy advocates described Facebook’s stance against Apple’s moves — which Apple portrays as privacy-forward — as cynical and even anti-privacy.

“I don’t think we are anti-privacy in any way, shape or form,” Facebook’s vp of product marketing for business products Graham Mudd told Digiday. “In fact I think the kind of data that Apple’s policy is looking to control access to is exactly the kind of data that we have tried to make very transparent in our off-Facebook activity tool which we launched well over a year ago.” The company offers its users a summary of activity that businesses and organizations share with Facebook about their interactions, such as visits to other apps and websites, and allows them to disconnect their accounts from that tracking and clear their off-Facebook data history.

Meanwhile, some small business owners remain unaware of Apple’s tracking changes. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” said Kana Hinohara Hanson. A Japanese-American, Hinohara Hanson and her husband operate a small purveyor of sake and Japanese prepared foods called Fulamingo (named to reflect the Japanese pronunciation of flamingo). They only started running ads this January — and only on Facebook and Instagram because that’s what a marketing consultant suggested. She said she doesn’t know where else she’d advertise if Apple’s cross-app tracking disruption reduces the effectiveness of Facebook ads. “I guess my instinctual feeling is, like well, maybe I don’t put any more money into marketing anymore,” she said. Instead, she said she might focus more on creating organic posts for Instagram.

Some representatives of small business groups and others who consult with small businesses whom Digiday spoke to for this story also said that the Apple update is not on the radar of many entrepreneurs. “I have worked with probably fifty or more businesses this month individually and in class settings,” business coach Sean Harry told Digiday in late February. “Nobody has said anything about this to me. It has never come up.”

Will Cervarich, owner and general manager of Betsy and Iya — which makes jewelry that it sells in its brick-and-mortar shop and online — said the same. “I have a lot of colleagues in small business retail, and no one has complained or expressed concern” about Apple’s tracking change, he said.

Representatives from two small business groups Digiday spoke to who did not want to be named in this story also said they had not heard about members discussing the Apple change. One of the representatives said, “If you’re a mom and pop that’s facing closures, this isn’t an issue to you.”

Education, advocacy (and talking points)

Facebook has been trying to make Apple’s anti-tracking change an issue for mom-and-pop shops, however.

Sometime in late 2020, independent novelist Ray Keating saw a notification from Facebook on his Facebook page regarding Apple’s changes, he recalled. “It caught my attention just because the [Facebook] ads have made a real difference in terms of book sales,” said Keating, who spends a few hundred dollars a month to promote his fictional series about a former Navy SEAL and CIA agent-turned-pastor called Stephen Grant. Keating isn’t sure whether the Apple change will affect his book sales, but he said Facebook ads have helped him sell titles such as “Warrior Monk,” “The Traitor” and his most recent, “Vatican Shadows.”

Facebook’s effort goes far deeper than notifications and newspaper ads. The company also created a #SpeakUpForSmall toolkit aimed at small businesses that’s one part education and one part advocacy blended with a dose of alarmist doom. “Small businesses like mine don’t deserve to be punished by Apple’s update,” declares a printable sign that Facebook coaches small businesses to display and that is included in a toolkit document labeled “instructions.” The sign includes other talking points like, “I built my business with personalized ads. Apple’s update will hurt them and my business.” The kit even features digital stickers and frames to add #SpeakUp flair to Facebook and Instagram posts and stories.

Amid pressure from antitrust regulators and legislators blaming its algorithmic systems for amplifying extremist speech and disinformation, Facebook is incentivized to broadcast the benefits that its platform brings to small businesses. Not only does the strategy spotlight the potential ripple effects that restrictions on its business might have, it helps counter the negative narrative around its role in society.

But despite all its talking-points, signage and volunteer ambassadors, the campaign shouldn’t be construed as political campaign-style astroturfing, Facebook’s Mudd told Digiday. Instead, he said the goal of #SpeakUpForSmall “was to provide small businesses with an opportunity to share their voices on the issue if they want to. It was basically education and advocacy,” he said. “My team is largely focused on support and guidance.”

Facebook has published educational resources to help small businesses navigate Apple’s tracking update. For instance, because the changes will limit the number of conversion events per website domain, it encourages advertisers to verify their domains to establish which account has the authority to configure and prioritize those events. It also recommends that businesses update to Facebook’s SDK for Apple iOS 14 which supports Apple’s SKAdNetwork API and enables measurement for app install ads.

‘Not all messages can reach all people’

Apple’s tracking update isn’t the only thing disrupting small businesses on Facebook. Some small business owners complained that Facebook’s own changes have thrown a wrench in their efforts for years.

Companies have spent more and more money on boosted posts and Facebook ads to keep up with the decline in organic reach brought on by algorithm updates and the influx of additional businesses joining the platform. Facebook in 2016 updated its news feed algorithm to emphasize posts about friends and family, which led to suppression of posts from business pages. But even back in 2013, Facebook reportedly began notifying some marketers that companies’ organic reach would begin to decline on the platform.

“Not all messages can reach all people,” said Mudd. “As people engage with, like and follow more and more businesses, then the sort of, if you will, competition for [getting into] an individual’s news feed increases over time.”

Before Facebook tweaked algorithms to boost the importance of posts from family and friends, jewelry maker Betsy and Iya “had a lot of engagement on Facebook and Instagram,” Cervarich told Digiday. “It was a great way for us to stay in touch with our existing customers and deepen our relationships.”

Eventually, that access to customers dissipated. “We were trying harder to get less and less engagement,” he said. “It was a huge, huge time-suck on the business.” Cervarich calculated that since 2010, Betsy and Iya spent $33,000 on Facebook and Instagram marketing and advertising, including things like copywriting, content creation and marketing consulting to craft engaging content that would be deemed worthy by Facebook’s morphing algorithms.

But it wasn’t just the money, time and resources that factored into the company’s assessment of Facebook, he said. The founders were troubled about spending money to advertise on a platform they believed was fueling societal ills such as increased depression and suicides, divisiveness and election interference. “They found outrage is a really good way to keep eyes on the screen and sell more ads,” Cervarich said.

So, between June and September of 2020, Betsy and Iya didn’t post anything on Facebook and Instagram or run any ads on the platforms. The result? “We didn’t see a decline in revenue and we didn’t see a decline in repeat purchases or awareness,” Cervarich said. Since then, the small business has left Facebook entirely.

A guide to publishers’ NFT experiments

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are the media industry’s latest shiny new toy, and some media companies are minting more than a few pretty pennies by experimenting with the internet collectibles.

Time released a three-piece NFT collection of covers that are in their “Time … is dead” series.  Quartz turned an article titled “This article is on sale as an NFT” into an NFT as part of a journalistic experiment. The New York Times turned a column about NFTs written by technology columnist Kevin Roose into an NFT. And Bleacher Report collaborated with hip-hop artists including 2 Chainz and Quavo to design GIFs of basketballs in honor of the NBA All-Star Game and sell them as NFTs. 

These publishers are among the first to wade into this new, murky revenue stream. Their experiences provide a guide for how other publishers can mint their own NFTs (if only to one day put them on the virtual mantle alongside their chatbots and 360-degree videos). 

WTF are NFTs?

Great question. Read our guide on NFTs here. In short, they are the internet’s attempt to turn what are effectively lines of code from a commodity into a collector’s item.

How do you create an NFT?

• Bleacher Report created all of the NFT files in-house, which were designed with the help of hip-hop artists Quavo, Lil Baby, 2 Chainz and Jack Harlow. B/R then partnered with GigLabs, which provided the technology for Turner Sports’ Blocklete Games IP, according to Tyler Stewart, B/R’s vp of brand and experience. GigLabs was responsible for uploading the completed NFT files and code to the marketplace OpenSea where the minting took place.
• Quartz’s senior reporter Samanth Subramanian first brought the idea to the Things section editor David Yanofsky. The two then wrote the article, executive editor Heather Landy edited the piece and then Yanofsky handled most of the technical components of the NFT, using OpenSea and MetaMask to mint the NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. 
• Time’s first NFT was of a made-up logo for its new crypto team, Project C, that was designed by Time staff. Then, on March 8, the publication used NFT marketplace Mintable’s technology to mint it on the Ethereum blockchain as an experiment. This first NFT was not meant to sell, according to Time president Keith Grossman, who set the price at around $100,000. Instead the publication’s aim was “to make the point that it is really easy to mint things and you shouldn’t overcomplicate what the barriers to entry are,” he said. The “Time … is dead” cover collection was also minted on the Ethereum blockchain but instead used the SuperRare marketplace, which is known for selling rare collectibles. 

How long does the process take?

• Bleacher Report: 10 days
• Quartz: One week 
• Time: Two weeks

How much are they selling for? 

• Bleacher Report’s Open Run collection’s top selling NFT was sold for more than $70,000 (38 ETH) within one day of being on the auction block. B/R will also earn an undisclosed percentage of any residual sales.
• Quartz’s NFT article was sold for about $1,800 (1 ETH). The winning bid was made one day after the NFT was created. Quartz will also receive 10% of any future sales of the NFT, but all profits and residuals will go to the Lauren Brown Fellowship. 
• Time’s top selling cover, “Is Fiat Dead” sold for $131,611 (83 ETH).
• The New York Times’ column sold for nearly $650,000 or (350 ETH) after one day. The profits were donated to The New York Times’s Neediest Cases Fund.

What else can publishers do with NFTs and cryptocurrency? 

By mid-April, Time will start accepting subscription payments via cryptocurrency payments, Grossman told Digiday. Not only that, but he said Project C will work to create an infrastructure for crypto-payments that can be licensed out to other publishers. 

Are publishers actually seeing this as a new revenue stream? 

Let’s just say no one is pinning this year’s profits on NFTs. 

“The collectibles moment is one aspect of what this is, but the infrastructure is the more exciting aspect,” said Grossman, adding that he is investing in growing a team of 50 who will specifically work on NFTs and crypto.

“We’re currently evaluating the future of any potential NFT practices at Bleacher Report and Turner Sports,” said B/R’s Stewart. “It’s a new frontier and there’s the potential to leverage the B/R brand in meaningful ways with our audience. We’ll see if and when it makes sense for us to create moments for ourselves or brand partners — but we’ll be thoughtful and strategic in our approach.” 

“It’s explanatory journalism, not a new business line for Quartz,” said Zach Seward, CEO of Quartz. “For media companies, maybe blockchain ends up changing the nature of their licensing businesses, but if so, that’ll be in the background and over a long stretch of time. Which is to say, there will be no ‘pivot to NFT.’” — Kayleigh Barber

Confessional

“The death of the cookie will be a minus-50% on all this shit. That’s not changing. We know 50% of the value of an impression is going away.”

— Publishing executive on how the third-party cookie’s demise will affect programmatic ad prices

Publishers are still just window-shopping identity tech

It seems like a new identity tech product replacing cookies hits the market every day. But if their email inboxes filled with identity tech sales pitches are any indication, it is publishers’ ad operations and revenue staff who are feeling the onslaught more than anybody.

ID providers including LiveRamp and ID5 are actively courting publishers, but the discussions tend to be focused on building awareness and education at this stage. ID5, for instance, is conducting teaching sessions with key publisher targets and publishing other educational guidance and resources.

Despite the cookie deprecation countdown clock ticking, however, at this stage many publishers are hesitant to dive into identifiers. Here’s why:

Cookies aren’t dead yet, so advertiser demand isn’t there.
Until cookies stop working, there isn’t much incentive to flip the switch, said Jarrod Dicker, vp of commercial at the The Washington Post. Around 150 publishers use The Post’s ad platform Zeus, which the publication aims to integrate with “any major identity partner” to make sure publishers and advertisers can use the tech they prefer, Dicker said.

However, although The Post plans to work with The Trade Desk to enable the much-hyped Unified ID 2.0 — an open source technology developed by several industry players — “To date there’s really no incentive to turn on [Unified ID 2.0] except for preemptive work,” Dicker said. “We’ll be ready with it once the demand starts coming through.”

Publishers are unsure what to invest in.
Most identity tech costs no money for publishers to implement, but it does require time and resources. In other words, there is an actual cost. Until publishers have a better indication of which identifiers advertisers want to use and what technologies will be viable going forward, they aren’t rushing into decisions.

They don’t want to cede audience value to ad tech (again).
Publishers are skeptical of another round of ad tech that doesn’t deliver the targeting and inventory benefits they promise or bleeds the value they’ve built through direct audience connections. For instance, some identity tech firms want permission to use insights from publisher data to help them do matching for other partners or clients, said Brendan Riordan-Butterworth, a tech consultant for HIJ Consulting who has been evaluating identity technology for publishers.

The privacy jury is out on email-based IDs.
The ad tech industry may be rallying around email-based cookie alternatives, but one large news publisher said they are wary of privacy regulations or consumer advocacy backlash scuttling adoption of those solutions. — Kate Kaye

Numbers to know

$47 million: The amount raised by nonprofit newsrooms across the country for the fifth annual NewsMatch campaign, the most raised for the 300+ members of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

$50 million: The revenue lost in 2020 by The Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, both owned by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, mostly due to declines in print advertising, as well as digital advertising and print circulation.

$65 million: The venture capital funding raised by newsletter subscription platform Substack, valuing the company at around $650 million.

$100 million: The amount Mason Slaine, a Florida-based tech investor and minority shareholder in Tribune Publishing, is putting down toward a potential bid for the company from hedge fund Alden Global Capital, in an effort to purchase the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun Sentinel.

How Group Nine is planning its office return

Group Nine Media is among the media companies currently aiming to return to the office in the fall, according to the company’s chief people officer Annie Trombatore. However, plenty can still change between now and then, and there are still aspects of the office return that need settling.

Should employees be required to be vaccinated to return to the office and/or to wear masks when working in the office? Do employees who may have moved out of commuting distance to the office need to move back? Are employees even comfortable returning to the office?

Here is how Group Nine is sorting out the situation.

Soliciting employee feedback
In addition to receiving input from its employee resource groups, the company has been using the surveys it began sending out last spring to make sure employees were able to adapt to working remotely. Rather than simply poll employees on whether they want to return to the office, the company has tried to use the surveys to assess how employees’ personal situations may vary and factor in their willingness to return.

“We didn’t just say, ‘Do you want to come back to the office or not?’ It was, ‘Are you caring for someone high risk?’ Are you someone who feel you’re productive at home and, in a long-term scenario, would want to do this?’” said Trombatore. “It wasn’t just a simple yes-no.”

Employees’ responses were also not so simple. Instead of there being a clear sentiment among employees, their feelings on returning to the office varied widely, Trombatore said. As a result, Group Nine’s office return strategy is similarly elastic.

Providing time to deal with details
Employees will be given at least 30 days notice before Group Nine is scheduled to fully reopen its office, though the window will likely be longer than that so that employees don’t need to scramble to deal with any changes to their living situations, according to Trombatore.

Given that Group Nine won’t return to the office until the fall at the earliest, it is also giving itself time to decide whether to mandate that employees wear masks and be vaccinated. The company has looked into the legality of the latter requirement and been told by legal counsel that it would be able to require employees be vaccinated. But for now, the company doesn’t see a need to take a hardline stance on that question, Trombatore said.

Preparing for the new normal
For now, the only certainty about Group Nine’s office return plan is that not all employees will return to the office and the company will instead adopt a hybrid model. That hybrid model, however, introduces a new question: How to maintain an inclusive working environment when not everyone is working in the same place?

“You don’t want to create an environment where people who aren’t in the office feel left out or like they can’t be as effective. That’s a lot of the reason why we’re slowing down and taking our time here, not only to make sure our managers understand how to navigate a hybrid workforce but you can’t snap a finger and bring back the same employee events and experiences that you had pre-Covid when everyone was in office,” Trombatore said. — Tim Peterson

What we’ve covered

The coming cookie changes will force some publishers to abandon advertising altogether:

• Digiday research reveals that the smallest publishers are preparing for the coming cookie changes much differently than their smaller counterparts.
• The apathetic approach to the coming cookie changes is part of a years-long trend of small publishers deemphasizing digital advertising, as it gets more and more complicated.

Read more about the implications of the Google changes for small and medium-sized publishers here.

Connected TV faces its own identity crisis with the IP address’s future in doubt:

• As consumers cut their cords and money leaks out of the broadcast market, the connected TV ad ecosystem is growing at breakneck speed.
• The industry’s players are trying to manage that growth in a privacy-conscious way, as more and more money is spent using the IP address, an identifier many observers expect to run afoul of privacy regulations eventually.

Read more about the connected TV ecosystem’s balancing act here.

Slow recovery ahead for mobile marketers post-Apple tracking crackdown:

• Mobile marketers are bracing for substantial drops in CPM — possibly upwards of 50% — immediately following Apple’s anti-tracking policy changes.
• The coming changes are driving increases in spending to reach users who have opted out of tracking, just to learn more about how campaigns aimed at anonymous users perform.

Read more about what the Apple changes mean for mobile ad inventory here.

Four years into its subscription strategy, Medium still doesn’t spend money to acquire customers:

• Medium made headlines last week when it announced it was abandoning its publication strategy that had led to its hiring close to 80 journalists.
• The platform never spent any money to acquire customers, a rarity among consumer product companies. 

Read more about Medium’s strategy here.

What MEL Magazine’s fate means for brand-owned publications, and why it’s bad for journalism

• Unlike many brand publications, MEL Magazine actually fulfilled many of the lofty ambitions, delivering pioneering coverage of many things.
• But its unclear contribution to sales likely doomed the six year-old publication.

Read more about MEL’s legacy here.

What we’re reading

Facebook’s app for kids could improve ad targeting:
Facebook is plotting an Instagram-like app for kids under 13, a potentially safe and ad-free environment that keeps them off the real Instagram, where kids aren’t allowed, according to The Wall Street Journal. While an ad-free app might not seem to make financial sense, it could improve Facebook’s ad-targeting and data capabilities, without children getting in the way of efforts on Instagram.

Pandemic and post-election news cycle takes its toll on media industry:
Layoffs, restructuring and shutdowns have hit media companies like HuffPost, Medium, MEL Magazine and Vice Media, according to CNN. The Covid vaccine rollout may soon bring an even worse situation for publications, with people spending less time on screens and more time outside. The next phase of media consolidation may be around the corner, as SPACs and companies going public rise in popularity.

A round-up of vacant top editor positions:
A surprising number of top editor positions are open right now at some of the country’s biggest newsrooms, after a year of many journalists burning out and leaving the industry. Poynter compiled a list of the biggest openings —including those at The Washington Post, The LA Times, Reuters, CNN and Teen Vogue, among others — with details on why those editors left, who is overseeing editorial in the interim and potential contenders for the top spots.

Ad tech pushes another alternative to the third-party cookie:
With Google’s plan to withdraw the use of third-party cookies (which lets advertisers track users and measure ad performance) in its browser by next year, some ad tech companies say they have an alternative — and one that is less disruptive to people’s online experiences, according to Bloomberg. An anonymous identifier called SWAN lets people control what ads they see online. The benefits of SWAN: users do not have to opt-in at every website. Instead, their preferences are saved across the network of sites using SWAN.

Items range in price from $16 for a keychain to $100 for a cold brew tap handle. Other products include scrunchies, tumblers, a onesie, shoelaces, and a phone case.

Dunkin’s latest merch drop shows how brands are finding new ways to capitalize on TikTok’s popularity, beyond influencers mentioning products in their videos. It could be an avenue more marketers take advantage of as they consider how to make TikTok less of an experimental channel and more of a permanent strategy.

This is not the first time a brick-and-mortar brand — or even retail chain — has expanded into merchandise. In December 2019, McDonald’s launched Golden Arches Unlimited, an online shop for McDonald’s apparel and accessories. Coca-Cola’s online store sells products including ornaments and housewares. Taco Bell customers can buy water bottles, pajama sets, and even puzzles.

Dunkin’s partnership speaks to TikTok’s growing credibility among marketers as brands experiment with the best ways to meet consumers there. There’s a lot of opportunity: Vita Coco coconut water claimed a 15% increase in sales one week after Lizzo posted about loving “nature’s cereal” — a mix of berries and coconut water.

“I think it’s a smart move,” said Gabe Feldman, senior business development lead at Viral Nation. “This goes beyond the one-off cute selfie and a clever caption. This is a long-term brand ambassadorship that hasn’t even been done with a celebrity.” Dunkin’ seems to have taken a page from the McDonald’s partnership with Travis Scott, when the fast food chain put the rapper’s favorite childhood order on its menu in September of last year.

“Our shop is about limited capsule collections for a sense of urgency and exclusivity,” said Kemma Kefalas, manager of brand engagement at Dunkin’ Brands, who added that D’Amelio was involved in choosing the products in the drop.

“[Merch lines are] about creating buzz and consumer engagement, it’s typically not about generating significant royalty revenue,” said Emily Randles, president at IMC Licensing. “Usually with food and beverage brands, the goal of branded merchandise is to drive engagement and build top of mind awareness with the core consumer base.”

Merch has always been a part of brands’ images, long before the pandemic, said Meg Beckum, executive creative director at Elmwood, a brand consultancy. Especially for brick-and-mortar stores and packaged brands, merchandise can be another touchpoint for consumers.

“I think the new focus is that brands are trying to get more ‘bang for their buck’ on merchandise, something more than just slapping a logo on a tote bag,” Beckum said. “Smart brands will see items as an extension of the brand story, that have utility and brand relevance.”

Dunkin’ first launched an online store in December 2019 as a way for customers to purchase holiday gifts, after noticing smaller products such as nail polish and lip balm did well in stores.

Dunkin’ declined to share specific revenue numbers made from merchandise sales, but did note that the deal was done through the partnership with D’Amelio, not through brand licensing. 

Partnerships like this are not usually paid in a lump sum, but rather through a royalty agreement or revenue share, Feldman said, adding, “In the past, I’ve seen 50/50 splits, or some as high as 70/30.”

While revenue depends on the brand and partnership, Randles says one to two-year deals have lower ROI than longer-term deals. “Food deals can be good because they drive repeat purchases,” she added.

Over the next year — and for years to come — digital identity is going to be harder to track. These changes come in a variety of forms. The most pressing is iOS 14, Apple’s new mobile software, which forces apps to ask customers to opt in to share personal data. Meanwhile, Google’s new Privacy Sandbox — which will be its replacement to the third-party cookie— will make targeting even more difficult. Lastly, a slew of regulations are on the horizon — namely Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA — that will make companies be much more intentional and up front about the data they collect.

In order to find new audiences online, marketers are “going to have to use different tools and strategies,” said investor and marketing strategist Nik Sharma. Which means the days of the Faceook whiz who can type out a few keystrokes and acquire thousands of customers thanks to an algorithmically-provided lookalike may be numbered.

Performance marketing isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has become an important crutch over the past several years, particularly among DTC brands. Consider two DTC darlings that grew during this recent performance marketing boom. Casper, when it went public in 2020, disclosed that in 2018 it spent $123.5 million in marketing on $157.8 million in revenue; in its S-1, the company said that half of its marketing spend was “allocated to online.” When Peloton went public in 2019, it said it spent $324 million in marketing on $915 million in revenue. As Modern Retail wrote in mid-2019, performance marketer was the one job that every brand was trying to find.

During this time, both Facebook and Google were making their ad platforms more plug and play. “What Facebook was beginning to do,” said Taylor Holiday, managing partner at Common Thread Collective, was build “a system where almost anybody could use their tools.” Performance marketing, he said, “became a creative conversation more than [about] tactical media buying.” The effect? “Everybody in the world had a Facebook agency in the last 24 months,” he said. 

But things are about to change. It’s no longer enough to have swagger on Twitter and LinkedIn and brag about ROAS since companies like Facebook will no longer be able to hoover up the customer data they have in the past. Even Google, which is relatively more insulated from the iOS changes than others, will have more limited targeting opportunities under its new Privacy Sandbox program that will cause marketers to get more creative or less precise.

Brands are already thinking carefully about future marketing campaigns. According to Ju Rhyu, co-founder and CEO of Hero Cosmetics, the company has relied heavily on performance channels — and done all of it in-house.

Now, she’s beginning to rethink the approach. 

“There are a few questions for us going forward,” Rhyu said. “One is, do we continue to rely as heavily on these performance channels that we’ve been using until now? No one really knows what is really happening.” If she does continue down the performance marketing path, Rhyu said she will likely have to seek out agency partners — but that, of course, brings up a slew of new questions given the future terrain is so untested.

For now, Rhyu is keeping an eye on other brands that have decided to take their foot off the gas. She’s noticed these companies have instead invested in campaigns like influencer marketing or new types of packaging. “We’re prepared to look for other places to invest those dollars if it turns out the environment is not going to be so friendly to brands,” Rhyu said.

With less data to go around, Matt Naeger, chief strategy officer at Merkle, said that performance marketing will soon be much more integrated into the brand side of things. Which is to say that marketers will have to focus more on storytelling and longer term initiatives that don’t have instant payoffs, rather than quick and dirty customer acquisition tricks thanks to algorithmically derived lookalike audiences. “A lot of performance marketers don’t play in the brand space in all,” he said. “But this evolution is going to force that.”

Meanwhile, Holiday warned that while the barrier to entry for performance marketing may be higher, with less data results will be harder to prove. “There is more room for less verifiable methodology as the data gets obfuscated,” he said. “That leaves more room for anecdote and story to have power.”