Month: July 2021

With domestic travel back in vogue this summer as the pandemic retreats and travel restrictions ease, industry leaders are eager to reconnect with their favorite destinations — packing in some much-needed R&R after the past, turbulent year. Bosses we talked to had either already been on holiday or planned to take time out before the Labor Day weekend, after which many companies are planning to head back to the office, at least on a hybrid schedule. 

For Jason Chebib, head of strategy in the New York office of agency 180, the Big Easy is the place he missed most as the world was shut down. 

“The first time I visited New Orleans, it was a revelation: a city both sleepy — especially in the summer humidity — and crackling with life,” said Chebib, whose shop does work for brands like Under Armour and Sony’s PlayStation. “Bourbon Street at night is full of tourist mayhem and excess, and yet even there you can stumble into a bar and find Cajun music, which I love, being played by the most authentic artists in the genre. I’ve had meals in NOLA that have lingered in my memory longer than most.”

Also, America’s history, both the light and the dark, lies just beneath the surface of this historic Southern destination. “You can still see the scars left by Hurricane Katrina, and outside the French Quarter there’s crushing evidence of poverty,” he added. “But there are also lively unexpected encounters, like an excited wedding parade of parasol-twirling well-wishers, which greet you out of nowhere when you divert down a side street. 

“NOLA is a world utterly unlike New York. To me it feels ‘other’ in every way imaginable. When I get back there, I know it will be the reset I’ve been hungrily awaiting through too many months.”

Time off the clock is so important at The Media Kitchen in New York that the agency has instituted an unlimited vacation policy, said CEO Barry Lowenthal, who has had the opportunity to visit 48 countries because of the policy. With his office reopening under a hybrid arrangement in September, the month of August will be a busy one for travel for him and his colleagues. 

While a safari in Botswana will still have to wait another year or two, Lowenthal looks forward to visiting friends in Santa Barbara in the coming weeks and to trips to the company’s Minneapolis and Toronto offices in early fall. “I love running along the river in Minneapolis and staying at the Loews downtown, and our office in Toronto is in the ‘Williamsburg’ of Toronto, on King Street East,” said Lowenthal, whose agency does work for Loews as well as clients like Lane Bryant and Vanguard. “I’m also excited to get back to Palm Beach in the winter, which is where I spent a lot of time last year before we all got vaccinated.”

He added, “Everyone who works in advertising is inherently curious, so I know we’re all jonesing to leave our apartments and neighborhoods and see the rest of the country and the world, and I hope everyone uses this time to come back inspired.” 

When brothers Sebastian and Saxon Eldridge, cofounders of New York-based agency Anchor Worldwide, were asked by email which spot they had missed most, their response was stunningly gorgeous photos of the Santa Fe landscape — and lots and lots of exclamation points. 

It’s the place the Eldridges moved as kids, following their parents’ divorce. They can still remember their mom, artist Alexandra Eldridge, waking them from a deep sleep in the back of their old Subaru on the last leg of a three-day, one-way road trip to the place they would eventually call home. (Saxon was 7 years old at the time, Sebastian aged 4 years old.) From the moment they saw it, the brothers fell fast and furious for the Sangre de Cristo Mountains hulking above what Saxon calls “the nestled-in, adobe-washed city called Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

As Saxon, who is CEO of the agency, tells it, “Post-divorce and a few cities in between, my mother, an artist, moved us to a place where we had no roots, no ties and knew no one. She did know, though, that her talents as an artist could support a single mother and her two young boys, in a city that she knew — and strategically chose — was the top third art market in the world.”

The first few years were challenging, as Alexandra built a reputation painting the interiors of some of the most lavish residences of the town. From reproductions of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” on ceilings to endless, dramatic faux finishes, “our mother managed to keep us afloat, while still somehow finding the time to dedicate to her own art,” Saxon said. 

Sebastian, chief production officer of Anchor Worldwide, whose clients include Amazon and BMW, chimed in: “Going back always soothes my soul, allows me to truly exhale and power down so I can be a better husband, father, business leader, son and friend.”

Saxon visited Santa Fe in early July. “Every time I return, I’m immediately transfixed by the vast, and richly colored skies that seem to rain inspiration,” he said. “I am also reminded that from this creative energy is born commerce, and the foundation upon which Santa Fe’s economy is built. Returning to Santa Fe, and basking in all of its wonder, brings me back to the beginning, the place that drove my desire to create in the first place. It always reinvigorates my drive and reminds me that success, no matter how you define it, is intrinsically tied to one’s roots. 

“Santa Fe will always provide the environment to ground me, and in turn, allow me the time to take a step back and view the world from 7,299 feet up — where, without fail, I rediscover the origins of my passion for what I do.”

Other bosses have stayed closer to home as the pandemic has begun to fade — but still managed to find ways to escape “the most stressful and burdensome year of our lives,” said Daniel Anstandig, CEO and cofounder of Futuri, a Cleveland-based audience-engagement and sales-intelligence software firm that works with media companies like iHeartRadio and Cumulus Media. 

Anstandig believes when employees are given the time and space to focus on their passions — including travel but also any number of other diversions closer to home — it makes for happier people and a better workplace. His own passion, for example, is music. Specifically, he’s a drummer who this summer produced two albums, one for The Voice alum MaKenzie Thomas and another for his own band, Rhythm and Truth.

“It’s important to keep life and work in balance, but some of the most stressed and unfulfilled people I’ve known are those striving for life-work balance, instead of making simple moves,” he said, adding, “We are energized when we’re doing something we care about.” 

3 Questions with Angie Hannam, global chief talent officer, R/GA

There is a lot of talk about this trend of the ‘great resignation’. How much of a risk is this for employers and how should they prepare for it?

We went on lockdown, socially distanced from one another, endured back-to-back Zooms, and started to live at work. As the world paused, people have re-examined their lives and are making choices that align with their values and principles. Employers need to be prepared to listen to their employees. At R/GA over the last 17 months, we have continuously listened to our employees to better understand their needs, mental and emotional well-being, tools they needed to collaborate better, and reimagining what a new, more human future of work looks like. Our hybrid working model was informed by and designed around conversations with employees about their needs and expectations in returning to work in a hybrid environment.

How will the trend of hybrid and more flexible working options at work, impact talent retention and acquisition at businesses which choose not to provide more flexibility? 

At R/GA, we heard from our employees that they want choice and flexibility. When they have more control of their work schedule, they can have a better work/life blend and can carve out more time to take care of the things in their personal lives while eliminating long commute times. That’s why we have committed to a hybrid working model and are redesigning the future of work. We’re letting our people decide for themselves how and where they and their teams work best. This could mean anything from people working remotely one day a week, to five days, or that teams will rotate working in the office. In the U.S., we expect to have 95% of our employees work fewer than five days a week in the office. Employees can also choose to pursue remote work arrangements in places outside commuting distance from any R/GA office, allowing them to relocate and for us to cast a wider net for recruitment. Almost 40% of our project teams now consist of people from multiple offices. So much so we are actively recruiting remote employees all over the globe.

How has the scope of opportunity around attracting the best talent widened as a result of the pandemic and should salaries vary by location? 

Hybrid working has brought so much opportunity to attract the best talent. Employees can do work when and how they’re most productive. It’s no longer about the time you work or where they work, it’s really about your output and impact. Activities have also become more flexible and equitable for the employees who choose to work from home—which has widened the talent pool, allowing us to not be restricted to office locations and coastal cities. This can give your organization a competitive edge, help you move into new markets, and increase productivity. Compensation should remain competitive to recruit and retain the best talent. Location and cost of living are considerations when determining salary, but other factors also apply. It is important to maintain pay equity in various locations especially if there are plans to build teams in specific markets. 

By the numbers:

• Among the unemployed, the number of job leavers (unemployed people who quit or voluntarily left their previous job and began looking for new employment) increased by 164,000 to 942,000 in June.
  [Source of data: Bureau of Labor Statistics.]
• Bounce rate in the U.S. — that’s employees going into the office once and not returning — was 16% in June, up 4% from May, compared to the global average of 19%.
  [Source of data: Robin’s Return-to-Office data.]
• Some reports are showing employers are dubious of research showing their staff plan to quite in great numbers this summer. This report showed HR managers across 770 companies polled, expect only 8% of their employees to quit once Covid restrictions are fully lifted.
  [Source of data: TINYPulse State of Employee Engagement report.]

What else we’ve covered:

• People who are deaf or have some form of hearing loss have felt neglected by employers in remote and soon-to-be-hybrid working setups. Without the go-to in-office methods of communicating like lip reading and sign language, they’ve felt frustrations build as video conferencing tools have been slow to develop tools they can use effectively, and IT departments have blocked them using other aids in remote working setups.
• It turns out some men also feel encumbered by gender stereotypes, which prevents many of them from taking more than a week or two of paternity leave, even if their company offers generous policies.
• Businesses continue to be creative in how they figure out new office models. Some are partnering with local businesses and retailers to use their space during downtimes — a move which they hope will give these businesses a much-needed boost while also providing better flexibility for their own employees.

This briefing is edited by Jessica Davies, managing editor of Future of Work.

Digiday spoke with Zaminasli and Amann about the media business today. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

In early 2020 when the world came crashing down around our heads, it sounds like it was an intense growth opportunity for you as you grew from 25 to 60 employees during that time.

Amann: Everybody had a moment of complete panic because everyone was shutting everything off, but … we’ve been in business so long, we’ve seen those trends happen. In 2008 was one of them, and then obviously COVID. I think we kept pretty level-headed. We’ve always kept our roster equal between B2B and B2C and I think that’s really kept us healthy over the years because when all of a sudden B2C freaked out because consumers weren’t buying anything, B2B still maintained. There really wasn’t much of a pause, so I think that really helped us keep our footing and then we pivoted and found new business, like Shipt, a grocery delivery company that couldn’t be more appropriate for the time.

Zaminasli: I also think the way we built our model over the years … you see ebbs and flows, and shifts with companies in-housing and then going the opposite way. Our model is almost plug and play. For some of our clients, we are agency of record, for some of our clients we handle their entire budget, working on the strategies and analytics. But then the [client] might have a really strong performance team in-house, so they do that while we work on the brand side and then bring it all together under one analytics deal.

Amann: I think another huge thing is that when Taji and I started the business, we were virtual. Even all the way up to 60 people we’re still a virtual company, and obviously that had big implications when COVID hit. For the last 15 years everyone has been telling us we’re crazy and that we should get an office. We just said, it’s not part of our model, and the strength that has brought us is that we have hired staff who are independent and love to work from home.

Zaminasli: I’d say 95% of our workforce has at least eight years’ experience. We’re in the 90s as far as retention rate, and we have a senior team. Agencies that are staffed with a junior team, you see a lot of turnover.

You bring a combination of brand experience, performance experience, B2C and B2B. Are there any kind of subsets within those disciplines where you stand out?

Amann: We’re often selling ourselves as much an analytics company as a media, buying, planning [agency]. We have clients that we’re working with their in-house performance teams. They were planning and measuring all of that in silos. That’s the rub because when you have  these large companies spending millions and millions of dollars on performance and then they try to add a brand layer, they have no way of connecting the dots and it doesn’t make sense to them.

For us, it’s about education, about setting up measurement and learning agendas, about setting up communication frameworks. It’s talking about the consumer journey and really mapping that all out so we can make sure that you have the right content. Because all too often they’re just stuffing their performance content and trying to prospect and it’s not going well.

How do you guide them through newer options where brand and performance can be tied closer together, like Snapchat or TikTok?

Zaminasli: I think it comes down to content and trying to understand how to speak to the younger generation and how to build those snackable videos that really turn that ship around, and some brands are doing it really well and some are failing, but everyone’s talking about it. Many of our clients are trying to reach teens. We have Proactive, which still runs a lot of traditional TV.  [Their hesitation around young-skewing social] is around the measurements. If they don’t see results right away then that means it doesn’t work. And that’s the education piece, going back to them to think about a platform like TikTok in a longer-scale strategy.

Color by numbers

Agricultural machine firm John Deere’s integration with Minecraft, called FarmCraft, launched a month ago on gaming platform Twitch. Since launch, FarmCraft was downloaded more than 2 million times.

Takeoff & landing

• Publicis made an aggressive move to deepen its e-commerce and retail-media bench by buying Australian SaaS platform CitrusAd, which will work with Publicis’ own Epsilon unit. Both will employ Epsilon’s CORE ID identifier.
• Omnichannel ad software provider Mediaocean purchased ad management platform Flashtalking to round out its digital/connected TV chops, in which Flashtalking specializes.
• Digital ad platform Amobee hired media agency veteran Pam Zucker as its senior vp of marketing.
• Horizon Media cut a licensing deal with TiVo for access to the video provider’s linear viewership data.
• Independent agency Known was named AOR for Lululemon’s Mirror business.

Direct quote

“Clutter is just as important to consumers and to the marketing efficacy as you can relate to. If you’re seeing 12 ads in a row, the likelihood of you memorizing any individual one versus seeing no more than 2 ads in a row is going to have a giant impact.”

—Krishan Bhatia, president and chief business officer, NBCU, on reduced ad loads on streaming platform Peacock, speaking with Mike Shields on the Next in Marketing podcast.

Speed reading

• Digiday marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy gets two women agency executives of color to open up anonymously about what’s working — and not working — with agency DE&I efforts.
• Variety takes a look at how ESPN, under chairman Jimmy Pitaro, is spreading its content across the Disney empire.
• Also in Digiday, Attention metrics firm Adelaide secured $2 million in funding from an impressive list of media bigwigs.

As the Gen Z and millennial cohort of 18- to 34-year-old internet users continues to grow, the reach that social video can get has started exceeding linear TV, according to Tubular Lab’s research study with The Global Video Measurement Alliance.

“When you start to do the research into it, online social video, which people are still trying to understand, it’s as large of a platform as any other major media,” said Stephen DiMarco, chief strategy officer at Tubular Labs. The only category where linear TV is still king is in sports, he said, due mainly to live game broadcasts.

But to try and win more media dollars away from television, Overtime and other publishers have to prove to marketers who are going after a younger audience that they have successfully captured those audiences on YouTube and Facebook. And with the number of publishers all vying to do just that, it will take a lot more than internal metrics to close a sale, especially when working with new partners, said Overtime’s CRO Rich Calacci.

Some media buyers, however, are at odds with needing to trust and verify a secondary partner in addition to the publisher, though they see the benefit of having another perspective on what audiences are interested in on the internet.

During a recent campaign that Yuting Zhang, ​the digital engineering director at Media Kitchen, was working on, she said her ad tech partners wanted to use third-party data to “reverse engineer” what the target audience might be more likely to watch, listen to, or read so they could place ads directly on that content.

“Having some general insights into what a broad audience’s behavior is would be beneficial for a new campaign. [But] after a campaign is live for a while, I would want to heavy up the use on [first-party] data and eventually fade out the use of [third-party] data,” Zhang said.

The following conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

Why do you feel third-party measurement and verification of your distributed video views is important as a publisher from a revenue standpoint?

Rich Calacci: If you think about the business we’re in, which is the business of sports, all of that is made better when there [are] officials on the court creating third-party validation of what was a foul and what was not a foul. The same is true in the media business. If you succumb to the temptation of grading your own homework, as that has happened in the past, and you don’t offer third-party validation to your brand, you miss a huge growth opportunity. In the end, marketers are quantitatively based. Qualitative factors certainly play a role, but they’re quantitatively based. And they need to see the data that says this dollar is going to get this audience. You need third-party validation to be able to attract and retain new brands.

Image description –

Data courtesy of Tubular Labs

Beyond the actual scale of views, do you work with Tubular to get into the nitty gritty of who this audience is, and if so, what are you looking for from that data about how they spend time with your brand online? What do your brand partners really want to know from this data? 

Calacci: The reach story is part of it, which is really important in the planning process, but the engagement story is equally important because we want to be able to index our performance, by video view, relative to our competitive set. Being able to do those two things simultaneously becomes really compelling for brands, as money is flowing from television into social video and you cannot reach 18- of 34-year-olds outside of the world of sports on television.

If somebody is trying to reach adults 50-plus, Overtime is probably not the best utilization of your marketing dollars. But at the same time, if you’re buying television trying to reach an 18- to 34-year-old audience, you’re making the same mistake.

So how does Tubular Labs actually get these insights from viewers on Facebook and YouTube? Is there any individual level tracking or do you use first-party data from the platforms to get access to user profiles? 

Stephen DiMarco: There’s no personal information. There’s no [third-party] cookies. It’s all direct data integrations, privacy compliant with GDPR and CCPA. We don’t interact with Overtime’s first-party data.

Everything [comes from] a hybrid methodology. We have a permission-based panel of consumers that we can see their demographics and if we don’t have a complete [picture], we can attribute demographics. And then we augment that with a lot of the information that we get from the platforms, some of that is from the platform, the platform’s the metadata that they add into the video, themselves, like the title of the video, or the format of the video. And some of that is actually from the users themselves. It attributes the person watching the video with the content of the video and it makes the connection. So you can say “yes, this is a woman 18 to 34 who’s watching a video about the WNBA.”

[To date], we probably ingest upwards of at least 5 billion videos across every content category. We’ve got 1,500 categories that map to 24 genres, one of those, of course, would be sports. And within that we’re processing videos every day, creating a taxonomy that allows companies like Overtime to very quickly identify trending sports content that could be appealing to one demographic or one geographic. Overtime can then decide, “Do we want to create some content?” Or, “Do we want to partner with an influencer here?”

What are some examples of how Overtime was able to use this data to close deals with brands? 

Calacci: Whether it’s our show “League Ready,” which was sponsored by State Farm, or “Drafthouse,” sponsored by Rocket Mortgage, in both those cases, with third-party validation coming from Tubular, we’re able to show a higher engagement rate versus our competitive set for those two series, which is really important because we’re a video lead business. Tubular is exclusively a video-led data set and being able to figure out what the sweet spots are for telling that story is really important. We’re able to show the clients — not necessarily in real-time but very expeditiously — that their relationship with Overtime and their relationship with that content yielded a higher level of engagement as evidenced by the data that Tubular provides.

Image description –

Data courtesy of Tubular Labs

How does this information help with non-endemic brands who aren’t in the sports space, or might not be directly interested in a sports audience? Basically, how are you appealing to new brands to keep adding to your roster of clients?

DiMarco: We have an “audience also watches” metric [that monitors] if you watch this type of content, you’ll also watch this type of content. It’s exactly that information that Rich’s team would then take to those categories. So you know, people who watch online social video content on overtime sports, also consume a lot of DIY Home Improvement content as an example, so that tees up a perfect opportunity for Rich and the team to go talk to Home Depot and Lowe’s and Benjamin Moore. It opens up categories upon categories because people don’t watch just one type of content. People watch all types of content, you just need to figure out what is the content graph for the rest of your audience’s viewer habits.

Calacci: If you talk about Overtime, generally, we’ve never been in the NASCAR business. That’s not really who we are, it’s not what our community is coming to Overtime to see. But in the last few months, we’ve done a whole content series about a young college sophomore from The University of Georgia, Hayden Swank, who’s trying to break into NASCAR. And the whole series is sponsored by Old Spice. To Stephen’s point, you have to show the community something different than just what they’ve come to you for. And some of the insights we’re able to derive around why they want that variety and how that sustains their viewership is then reinforced when we see longer watch times against these different types of content series.

It’s a combination of variety and creativity, as well as content quality, and you bring all those things back to your community, and are rewarded with larger audiences. Every single month for the past year, we’ve probably added a million-plus followers.

Eight years later and all seems forgiven. Not only are ad tech vendors the businesses du jour among many investors, but they’re also the flavor of the month amongst each other. Deals are being cut at a relentless pace.

In the last month alone: Mediaocean acquired ad tech firm Flashtalking. Magnite swooped in for CTV ad server SprinServe. Verve Group owner’s move for Smaato. Captify sold a majority stake to private equity firm SFW Capital. Not to mention the IPO moves from Teads, App Annie, and Integral Ad Science to name a few. Big mergers and IPOs are back. Don’t expect them to slow down.

“There’s so much money sloshing around the ad tech market now, whether it’s public capital or from private equity investors, that the line between deals being opportunistic and strategic has become a lot more blurred,” said Ratko Vidakovic, founder of ad tech consultancy AdProfs.

Translation: With so much money on the sidelines while interest rates are so low, it has to go somewhere, which could be to the best storytellers.

So are we staring at another ad tech bubble? Ad tech execs hope not, because when the last one burst, it triggered a cold long winter for swathes of the sector that took almost a decade to thaw. Struggling firms had to sell and swear allegiance to pre-existing fiefdoms as underwhelmed venture capital investors who never saw the returns they hoped for cooled on making further investments into ad tech. But the market is maturing. And investors and strategic buyers are paying attention.

“We’ve been riding the wave of consolidation high in recent months and this latest acquisition of Smaato will allow us to evolve our offering further with omnichannel, privacy-first solution,” said  Sameer Sondhi, chief revenue officer at Verve Group. “It’s a positive shift for the industry at large, moving from a fragmented landscape toward more holistic integrated companies which, ultimately, brands and advertisers can benefit from.”

Still, no one truly knows what all this portends for the ad tech market including the newly minted ad tech companies. Understanding whether ad tech is due for a correction anytime soon requires sifting through a plethora of factors, from ad spending forecasts to the velocity of money. And it’s unclear in which direction all those signals are pointed.

There’s one big difference between the last bubble and now, though: the ad tech companies today are positioned as software-as-a-service businesses (SaaS) — albeit ones that are often still paid as a percentage of the media dollars spent through their tech. Investors historically preferred the predictability of SaaS pricing, which dampened enthusiasm for margin on spending pricing alternatives. That mindset has reversed in recent years as the most successful software companies, from Amazon Web services to Google Cloud, are predominantly making money this way. It’s why the valuation multiple investors are looking for in these ad tech firms is the ability to attract media dollars. And that looks to be in rude health. In fact, GroupM reckons digital ad spending will represent 69% of the total U.S ad market.

There’s still room to run in this deal market it seems.

“In comparison to other public high growth sectors, the ad tech sector is not in a bubble,” said Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of ad tech vendor Centro. “Investors’ confidence is based on data-driven results: usage-based companies outperform SaaS comparisons fairly significantly: 38% higher growth, industry-leading Net Dollar Retention (NDR) scores, and are trading at a 50% P/E premium to their SaaS peers.”

The reality is no one wants to miss out when there’s so much speculative froth in everything from blank-check companies to eye-bulging valuations. But in a market awash with so much excess capital, contraction fears will always undercut the enthusiasm. Sure, investors have taken note of those concerns but many push on, wagering that there’s money to be made while economic policies remain loose. Take acquisitions; they’re less risky currently given most companies’ lower cost of capital. 

“There are VC-backed companies going public so the VCs and founders can exit in a very ripe market, largely driven by interest rates, not company or ad tech industry fundamentals,” said Tom Triscari, a programmatic economist at consulting firm Lemonade Projects. “It will be quite a feat for these open web ad tech players to deliver consistent earnings and make sure they don’t get up in any undisclosed or unforeseen in their risk statements.”

It’s a warning that every cycle, as it runs out of steam, reveals problems that seem obvious in hindsight. After all, ad tech is a volatile market where transparency into its real finances hasn’t always been clear. For example, there are public companies that don’t disclose gross ad spending through their platforms, making it more difficult to split out the media dollars processed through them versus the revenue they get to keep. During good times, people tend to overlook wrinkles. As Warren Buffet famously noted, only when the tide goes out can you see who has been swimming naked.

Then again, these are unprecedented times — and nothing is playing out how it normally would. 

Between more people getting vaccinated, the release of pent-up spending demand, lower interest rates, unemployment decreasing as wages rise alongside economic stimulus packages, there’s a good chance the economy will roll on for a while yet. It puts a different spin on the ad tech sector’s prospects. Of course, it has to face up to existential challenges over the next few years, but the conditions for another crash aren’t as defined as they were last time. Yes, many of the companies doing well now are the ones that have the best storytellers. But stories don’t necessarily equal fluff. There are opportunities for ad tech, from the much-quoted CTV to solving identity to retail media, that all point to a much stronger focus on execution than maybe a decade ago.

“Deal volume is being driven by the private markets and those investors are seasoned who have a laser-sharp focus on where in the market they can get returns,” said Chris Sahota, CEO of M&A advisory Ciesco. “Despite the valuations in the market, these investors try not to overpay otherwise they’d rather not do the deal. As long as there are great target companies and there’s capital to invest in them then this wave will continue in the private markets.”

That consistency appears to have helped “Stay Tuned” to attract and retain an audience on Snapchat. With 10.5 million subscribers on Snapchat, the show, on average, receives nearly 1 million unique viewers per episode, and more than 50% of its viewers watch at least three episodes each week, said Berend.

The steady audience of “Stay Tuned” can help NBCUniversal when selling the show’s Snapchat inventory to advertisers. Advertisers are likely to be more interested in “Stay Tuned” as part of a broader package encompassing other NBCUniversal inventory than as a standalone option, said Clair Bergam, associate media director at Media Kitchen. Nonetheless, the show’s regular viewership can make it a dependable component for an advertiser wanting to sure its brand reaches younger audiences.

“That level of recurring engagement — three times a week — is significant because, even though it’s a niche audience set, you know you’ll be able to give them your message enough times to ideally make an impact,” Bergam said.

An NBC News spokesperson declined to provide any revenue figures for “Stay Tuned.” The show “in many ways serves as the entry point for marketers looking to partner with us on Snap; increasingly, the program is a key component in many broader deals that span NBCUniversal’s One Platform,” said Trevor Fellows, evp of digital sales and partnerships at NBCUniversal in an emailed statement.

Of course, “Stay Tuned” has changed in some respects. Maya Eaglin has joined the show as reporter and cohost alongside original hosts Savannah Sellers and Gadi Schwartz. And like so many other programs, it had to adapt to remote production during the pandemic.

Starting out, “Stay Tuned” was very much a traditionally produced news program shot in a studio at NBCUniversal’s famed 30 Rockefeller Plaza building where “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” are also filmed. Over the years, the series had dabbled in remote and on-location production, but the pandemic’s impact on in-person production required the show to be produced from people’s homes. It was an adjustment that seemingly every production had to make and one that will remain an element of “Stay Tuned” as the show maintains the looser feel that’s more at home on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok.

“Freeing ourselves from the mandate to look an exact certain way over time made it easier to produce [the show]. It allows us to be more responsive, and from a creative standpoint, it gives the producers and talent more freedom and serendipity,” Berend said.

Some intended changes didn’t stick, however. In 2019, NBC News extended “Stay Tuned” to YouTube, but quickly stepped back from that strategy. The show’s YouTube channel has not uploaded a new video since August 2019. The decision to stand up the show’s YouTube channel predated Berend joining NBC News, and he said “Stay Tuned” will eventually build up its presence on Google’s digital video platform.

Meanwhile, there are changes afoot. “Stay Tuned” has stretched beyond Snapchat with a limited series called “The Overview” hosted by Schwartz that aired on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streamer late last year. And it plans to get more active on TikTok and in mobile video overall. “You will see us become even more aggressive across social and native social storytelling, which when you get down to it is mobile video storytelling,” Berend said, declining to share specific plans. 

Still, for many businesses, it’s hard to know which consumer shopping behaviors in particular are fleeting and which are here to stay. 

To help retailers navigate that uncertainty, Google examined its search data to create the 2021 shopping shifts guide, identifying four key trends for which all retail marketers should be ready. Here’s what our research revealed.

1. Digital inspiration powers the journey

   Shopping online is no longer just a more convenient way to get goods delivered to the customer’s door. It’s also where shoppers are discovering new products and finding inspiration. When customers roam virtual store aisles, they’re hoping to be excited by what they see, and they are looking for — or stumbling upon — inspiration in surprising places, sometimes when they aren’t even looking. 

   For example, in our February 2020 Google/Talk Shoppe survey of 2,000 video users ages 18–64, consumers said that they discovered new brands during lockdown, and 70% purchased from a brand after seeing a video on YouTube.

2. Shoppers’ values steer supportive spending  

   Increasingly, shoppers are putting their money where their values are — whether it’s sustainability, corporate responsibility or racial equality. Not surprisingly, according to Google Trends data looking at year-over-year growth for search interest in a single week, searches for “ethical brands” and “ethical online shopping” grew 300% and 600% in 2020 from 2019, respectively. Additionally, the number of global searches seeking out “black owned shops” grew by 9X year over year, as Google Data measured in the category of global English from April to June in 2020 versus the same period in 2019.

3. Consumers count on convenience more than ever

   With so many retail operations closed or operating under limited conditions, curbside pickup and same-day delivery became staples for many people. Global searches for “along my route” (+1,000%) and “curbside pickup” (+3,000%) both soared year over year, according to Google Data’s insights into global English searches between March and May of 2020 versus the same timeframe in 2019. Convenience became a key differentiator for retailers who were able to quickly pivot.

   Consumers have grown accustomed to having shopping options and will likely continue counting on them even as pre-pandemic behaviors return, creating a new post-pandemic shopping norm.

4. Unpredictability drives dynamic demand

   One thing marketers can definitely predict is that the world will remain unpredictable. As governments around the globe adapt to local changes and work to safely reopen, what shoppers need will adapt with it. Businesses saw this during lockdown, as people rediscovered old hobbies and adopted new habits. For example, year over year, as Google Data found in global English searches for “candle making kits” were up 300% (comparing November 2020 to January 2021 with the same period in 2019), while searches for “patio heaters” increased by 600% as people moved to eating outdoors (measuring August to October 2020 against the same period in 2019).

These insights are driving action for advertisers. They are working to create meaningful, contextual moments in unexpected places, and they are listening to the data to dovetail their messaging with the values their searches reveal. Leavened with convenience and bolstered by what the data shows to be rising demand in particular products and categories, the uncertainties around post-pandemic shopping behaviors is lifting. It’s the data, in 2021 — insights are opportunities to meet customers in the way they shop today.

This perspective originally appeared on Think With Google.