Less BS, More Facts, Some Opinions
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Can A Tiger Change Its Stripes? Google offered to split its ad tech business into a stand-alone company (owned by Alphabet) as a concession to divert an antitrust suit, The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s unclear which products Google would transfer – although… Continue reading »
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Marketing is a dynamic industry — and brands and agencies are constantly adjusting their marketing spend to account for that. And a lot can change from one year to the next. To learn more about those changes, Digiday+ Research surveyed 195 brand and agency professionals earlier this year — and discovered these key findings:
Explore these findings and more data below:
The post Digiday+ Research: How brands and agencies are investing in online marketing platforms appeared first on Digiday.
Welcome to Digiday’s DealBook. Our focus is to create a quick and easy rundown of the deals, acquisitions and hires that took place last week. The goal is to inform and update you on the latest happenings in the industry at the top of your inbox each Monday. — Carly Weihe
— Big tech companies, with Meta, have announced the slow or halt of new hires given the economic uncertainty. Mark Zuckerberg called an internal meeting informing staff that the company would be lowering the expected number of new engineers this year. Meta is the latest company to be reportedly pulling back on hiring, following similar moves by companies including Spotify, Coinbase, Netflix, and more.
— Amazon announced its investment in GrubHub, a food delivery service owned by a European-based company, Just Eat Takeaway, which will give Amazon Prime users free access to a one-year premium subscription to GrubHub services which eliminates delivery fees. GrubHub is not Amazon’s first attempted venture into the food delivery industry, with former CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos trying and ultimately failing in 2019 to get Amazon Restaurants off the ground. GrubHub faces a great opportunity to grow; it has struggled to gain majority traction in the U.S. given the slew of competitors.
— The European Parliament approved two big deals this past Tuesday: the Digital Markets Act which will require companies to gain consumer consent before targeting them with ads based on user data. In addition, it will also require interoperability for services like iMessage and WhatsApp. The second is the Digital Services Act, which will more heavily monitor the use of explicit content on platforms. If any company violates the terms of these acts, companies face a percentage fine of its YoY global turnover.
The post Digiday Dealbook: Companies announce hiring slowdowns, Amazon partners with GrubHub, new European laws affecting tech companies, and more appeared first on Digiday.
Layoffs and hiring slowdowns are sweeping the tech and media industries, as companies keep their foot on the brakes and look for ways to cut costs amid a tightening economy.
But the other side of the coin are some publishers that are resuming or continuing full steam ahead on their hiring plans. That’s in line with the latest Labor Department jobs report showing the labor market is still hot despite a looming recession.
Below are the latest expansion plans at BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, Forbes, Bloomberg and Hearst.
BuzzFeed
After focusing on “critical” hires from January to April and cutting jobs earlier this year, BuzzFeed has resumed its regular hiring process.
BuzzFeed News is “in various stages of recruitment” for a tech editor, lead curation editor, photo editor, senior visuals editor, curation editor, and breaking news reporter, according to a memo sent to staff on July 6 by Karolina Waclawiak, the new editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.
“We are currently working on a broader plan for how to reinvest in our newsroom, so expect more job postings to come in the weeks ahead,” she continued.
The hiring slowdown at the start of this year came after BuzzFeed acquired Complex Networks in December 2021 and revised the company’s budget for 2022 “to bring them in line with updated revenue forecasts and market trends,” a BuzzFeed spokesperson said.
When asked what the reason is for returning to a normal hiring plan, the spokesperson said, “We completed the integration of Complex and cost-savings associated with that – as well as BuzzFeed News buyouts.” BuzzFeed is in a buyout process for some BuzzFeed News employees and cut about 30 positions in other parts of the company.
The Washington Post
The Post is still on track with expansion plans set out by executive editor Sally Buzbee at the start of this year. “We continue to hire as normal,” a Post spokesperson said.
On July 11, The Atlantic’s Johanna Mayer-Jones will take on the newly created role of head of global client and agency partnerships at The Post, reporting to CRO Joy Robins. Four new job openings on the politics team were posted this week, Poynter first reported.
In February, Buzbee sent a memo to employees saying that more than 70 positions will be added to the newsroom in 2022. The new hires will expand the Post’s coverage of tech, health and wellness, climate and weather, political and social issues, international investigative work and grow the breaking news hubs in Seoul and London, she wrote.
Forbes, Bloomberg, Hearst
Hearst, Forbes and Bloomberg are actively hiring, too. The latter has added three people to the Bloomberg Green team this year, with plans to hire a few more.
In June, Forbes announced it was adding four tech journalists to its editorial team from BuzzFeed News (in May, Forbes announced BuzzFeed News tech and business editor John Paczkowski would join the company to lead its tech coverage).
“We are still growing and hiring,” a Forbes spokesperson said, though they noted, “Like all organizations, we’re keeping a close eye on the economy.”
At Hearst Magazines, “regular recruiting [and] hiring efforts are still underway,” a spokesperson said.
But not all good news for the industry
Despite signs of growing headcounts at some media organizations, others are being more risk-averse.
Vox Media has put recruiting for certain roles on hold, citing the “uncertain economic climate and ahead of a potential recession,” a spokesperson said.
Insider has slowed down its hiring “in response to the downturn in the economy,” according to a spokesperson, as The Daily Beast previously reported. Insider adjusts its hiring and investment plans every quarter. The spokesperson said there was no update on hiring plans for the third quarter.
Vice Media Group has reportedly slowed down on new hires. Vice declined to comment further.
Is the labor market cooling?
Recent reports on the labor market are giving conflicting views on the current state of hiring in the U.S.
LinkedIn’s monthly Workforce Report usually publishes the first week of the month, but the July report with June data won’t come out until mid-month, according to a preview of the report from Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn.
The LinkedIn hiring rate fell by 5.4% month-over-month in June, “suggesting that tighter financial conditions and softening demand might finally be hitting the U.S. labor market. Hiring fell to its lowest level since December 2021,” Berger wrote. There was an 11.9% year-over-year decline (though Berger notes June 2021 was “an unusually strong month, with the best hiring we have on record”).
“There’s good reason to expect hiring will edge down at least a little during the [second] half of the year, even if we avoid recession,” he continued.
Berger pointed to “outsized weakness” in the tech industry, where hiring fell to its lowest level since May 2021.
However, the U.S. economy added 372,000 jobs in June – maintaining roughly the average pace of gains from the past few months to show a hot labor market (368,000 in April and 384,000 in May) – according to the latest Labor Department data reported by The New York Times on Friday. The unemployment rate was 3.6%, the same as a month earlier.
The post While some publishers are slowing hiring plans, publishers like BuzzFeed and The Washington Post are not appeared first on Digiday.
As small businesses continue their pandemic recovery and reach new customers despite new economic uncertainty, American Express is adding new layers to ongoing efforts to get people to “shop small.”
Along with giving local businesses new tools for marketing on social media and other platforms, the financial services company is rolling out a new campaign in several major U.S. cities that aims to use QR codes and digital out-of-home ads to drive traffic to local businesses. The campaign — which launches today in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco — invites people who scan the code to visit various nearby businesses such as cafes, clothing stores and barber shops.
The efforts are part of Amex’s efforts to help small businesses since the 2008 financial crisis, evolving from a one-day effort each year into a year-round initiative. The latest updates come just a day before Amazon’s annual Prime Day as the giant continues to compete with a wide array of local businesses.
“What we hear time and time again is these businesses recognize the critical importance of marketing,” said Marianne Rausch, vice president of American Express’s Small Business Saturday and Shop Small. “Related to that, they recognize the role of reaching social media customers. But they are either not marketing experts or too busy and have so much going on that it’s challenging to stay on top of current trends and understand the best ways to utilize these platforms.”
American Express isn’t the only major company partnering with small businesses. For example, Apple worked with local Los Angeles coffee shops to promote both Apple Pay and Apple TV series like “Loot” and “Ted Lasso.” Later this summer, Amex will begin a pop-up concert series with Sirius XM that brings major artists to perform in local shops.
Karine Hsu, co-founder of the creative agency Slope Agency, said it can be effective when brands partner with local shops. Other things businesses have been experimenting with include SnackPass, which she said has been popular around college campuses to help drive loyalty using both QR codes and a gamified app. TikTok has been a “gamechanger” for local businesses, especially the case when a company taps into any viral trends, which can lead to long lines at restaurants and coffee shops.
“It depends on the owner and how digitally savvy the owners are,” Hsu said. “For these smaller restaurants, I’ve noticed it’s like the sons or daughters that tell the parents. I feel like Facebook, Instagram, Google are fine, just honestly a bit more ‘upkeep’ if anything.”
Rising ad costs have also made it harder for small businesses to reach the right audiences, said Jeff Philbin, director of business strategy for the Tampa Bay-based agency Schifino Lee Advertising & Branding. He said spending slowed while Apple rolled out changes to iOS that limited targeting on Facebook and Google, but while that’s trended upward again, algorithm updates make organic social media more competitive. Instead, Philbin said the agency’s CPG clients have found more success with organic SEO and partnering with influencers to back-linking.
Small businesses seem increasingly open to experimenting with how they reach customers. According to an August 2021 survey by Statista, 45% of shoppers in the U.S. said they’d used a marketing-related QR code in the three months. Meanwhile, a May survey conducted by the marketing platform CallRail found that 91% of respondents tested a new marketing channel in the past year while 80% tested an experimental campaign. However, a third of respondents said they found it hard to compete with other small businesses or larger brands on social media or other platforms.
Businesses are increasingly able to rely on QR codes to engage with customers more than when they happen to walk by a store, said Raleigh Harbour, president of the URL-shortening service Bitly, which acquired the German QR code company Egoditor in December. He said links and QR codes also allow small businesses to have more direct relationships and more information than just relying on walled gardens like Google and Facebook.
“Small businesses more than ever before now have the ability to tap into technologies and find new ways to engage customers that have historically been the domain of larger players,” Harbour said.
The post American Express is using QR codes and billboards to promote small businesses appeared first on Digiday.
The idea that the esports market is recession-proof is a misnomer. It doesn’t even have a clear route to profitability. That said, the sector is more diverse than ever and tends to profit when people spend more time at home. So while the economic winter will hit esports, it looks relatively well insulated from the worst of it.
Emphasis on the “looks.”
No matter how certain esports prospects seem, they’re not set in stone. Not least because the global video games market — a key bellwether for the commercial health of esports — will shrink this year. That’s according to researchers at Ampere Analysis, who predict the market will contract 1.2% this year, slumping from $191 billion to $188 billion. CFOs are the new power players in esports.
“The companies that have negative cash flow, that aren’t profitable, they’re going to go out of business, because the cost of capital is multiples higher than it was two years ago when interest rates were zero percent,” said JP Lee, a product manager at the investment firm VanEck. “M&A is going to be here; low-performing teams are going to get bought or folded into new ones, or they’re just going to go away.”
To survive, much less thrive, esports companies have been redefining and expanding what they do — while furiously coveting competitors. Of course, these pressures were there well before the economic crisis. They’re just more acute in the wake of the pandemic, media’s sputter and the beer goggles finally coming off as investors fall in love with P&L again.
Which is to say few — if any — esports organizations will deviate from the path they were on before the downturn. On the contrary, the crisis is pushing them all faster along it, whether it’s Faze Clan’s race to become an entertainment conglomerate or Subnation’s transformation into a holding company. To be clear, not all these companies will get closer to those destinations through this tumultuous time. Some will struggle, no doubt. Either way, consolidation is inevitable. Here are some examples:
“I would expect that further consolidation is coming, as esports teams do not have diverse enough revenue streams to sustain the currently saturated market and lack of media deals to offset costs,” said Chris Mann, svp of REV/XP, the esports division of sports marketing agency rEvolution.
There are opportunities in everything — even an economic downturn as confusing as this one.
“The ability, over the next year, to buy businesses at steep discounts, at much lower valuations, is going to present a massive opportunity,” said Paul Dawalibi, the host of the industry-tracking “Business of Esports” podcast. “Some very smart people are going to make a lot of money doing this.”
After the 2008 financial crisis, some economists declared that the sports industry was recession-proof, citing the industry’s stable long-term contracts and deeply ingrained position of sports in modern culture. Clearly, they had a point: even during hard times people still gravitated to Sunday Night Football with a beer in hand. To some extent, this is true for esports as well.
“There’s certain things that we, as consumers, prioritize, even if our budgets shrink,” said Irina Shames, chief revenue officer at G2 Esports. “If you’re passionate about gaming, if you’re a diehard fan, that’s not going to go away, right? You’re not going to stop consuming that content or engaging with your favorite brand.”
True as this is, let’s cut to the chase: the coming economic downturn is bad for the esports industry now.
For one thing, esports hasn’t cracked the puzzle of media rights, with fans accustomed to watching esports broadcasts free of charge. Granted, esports organizations have other ways to make money. Many of those organizations are experiencing a resurgence in non-endemic brand partnerships, for example. But it’s a revenue line nowhere near as insulated as media rights. In fact, advertising and sponsorship dollars are among the first to get cut when times get tough.
“We’re starting to see long-term sponsorship deals, so we definitely have a floor of revenue that’s going to continue to come in,” said Adam Rymer, CEO of the esports organization OpTic Gaming. “I don’t think we’re quite at that level — it’s not like we’ve got broadcast rights that are guaranteed by NBC or ESPN, where there’s a certain amount of money coming in, regardless of whether they’ve got advertisers to fulfill that or not.”
Even live events for franchised games — the lifeblood for many esports organizations — will be impacted by costs of ticket sales, travel and accommodations. In short, many esports business models are on quicksand.
As precarious as all this sounds, this moment will end. Lasting until then is hard but not impossible for esports bosses. After all, many of them have been on a tear over the last two years to cultivate a variety of commercial rights beyond sponsorship and broadcast deals. Even at a more fundamental level, there are signs of encouragement: yes, the gaming market is set to contract this year, but like traditional sports, gaming — along with esports — serves as a form of entertainment and escape from the stress many people are feeling during difficult times. Indeed, as long as gamers continue to play, viewers engage, and their friends participate in the culture, it all translates into impressions and time spent. Downturn or not, attention like this is like catnip for marketers.
“The average esports fan doesn’t necessarily go down to the Barclays Center to go to the live event, and I think that’s reflected in the revenues of the industry; that’s not what the industry is surviving on,” Lee said. “They’re surviving on sponsorship deals, and those aren’t going away.”
The modern esports industry took shape long after 2008, meaning most esports organizations have never had to deal with a true recession. Even during the financial downturn of the early COVID-19 pandemic, esports revenues surged as homebound consumers stepped up their gaming activity. ”There’s an entire generation of people operating companies right now who started their careers in the early 2010s, who think that only good things happen,” Dawalibi said. “Money keeps flowing, valuations keep going up.”
This lack of recession experience could be one reason why more esports organizations haven’t more noticeably cut back on spending as the threat of a recession mounts. But the early signs are there. With investors clamoring for growth, publicly-traded esports organizations might be feeling the pressure first; public esports companies such as Guild Esports and Enthusiast Gaming have already begun to enact layoffs and cut unprofitable businesses to balance the books.
As economically savvy esports organizations start to pull back on spending, content production budgets could be the first thing to go. After all, esports itself is all content, and organizations’ fine-tuned, highly produced YouTube documentaries tend to garner far less viewership than lower-lift content such as esports streams or the livestreams of individual players and influencers. “You’re basically taking flyers on content and then bringing on advertisers down the road, as you build an audience,” Rymer said. “I think the budgets for producing original content that doesn’t necessarily have a brand or sponsor attached to it have to go down — don’t expect to see any fighter jets taking off in our videos anytime soon.”
Ultimately, the esports industry’s greatest advantage during the coming downturn could be something largely outside the control of the esports companies themselves: the younger audience of esports. The average esports fan is 26 years old, a demographic that is largely unencumbered by expenses such as mortgages or childrens’ tuition payments.
“When you’re talking about the 18-to-35-year-olds, who aren’t necessarily saddled with all those big things yet, and they’re still gainfully employed — I’m just not sure that we’re going to see big changes in spending behavior for that group,” Rymer said.
The post How recession-proof is the esports industry? appeared first on Digiday.
It was a busy week in the business-to-business world last week, as two major media agencies opened their doors and expertise to marketers who want to solidify their business-side connections.
First, Horizon Media launched Green Thread, its B2B offering that uses data and insights from the Revenue Enablement Institute. Later in the week, Havas Media Group launched Havas Business, which aims to upend B2B marketing with what it calls a “boardroom-ready” approach that has already secured work for Maersk and AXA clients.
Gravity Global has also continued to acquire assets to broaden its B2B skills, the latest being Mojo Media Labs.
With apologies to The Buffalo Springfield (and to date myself horribly), there’s something happenin’ here… but what’s clear is the media agency world has seemingly woken up to a $30 billion pool of business brought on by recessionary economic jitters. And from the looks of it, B2B and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing are starting to overlap.
“The digital transformation, accelerated by the pandemic, has shifted B2B to more digital (vs. traditional) activities and spend,” said Kelsey Voss, principal analyst, B2B marketing, Insider Intelligence (formerly eMarketer). “As the B2B digital space becomes more crowded, there’s intense pressure on marketing leaders to stand out from the competition. The pandemic also ignited the expectation that marketing can drive business growth and not only keep businesses operating but be a major revenue center.”
The blurring of lines between B2B and consumer marketing could intensify as media agencies that have historically worked in the consumer space expand their offerings. “One thing I’ve always believed in — and I think a lot of the industry is starting to wake up to — is that the best B2B brands are more B2C in their marketing because decision-makers aren’t walking around the world thinking ‘I’m a business decision-maker.’ They’re people,” said Eric Perko, founder of independent media agency Apollo Partners.
“To succeed, B2B marketers have taken cues from B2C,” agreed Voss. “There’s a deeper focus on brand, customer-centricity, and the full buyer’s lifecycle — not just net new sales. There’s an effort to have better and more meaningful communication and engagement. These agencies understand the B2C — and this new B2B digital landscape is where agencies see an opportunity to help.”
Tom Gavin, senior vp of marketing for Coupa Software, a procurement platform, sees B2B crossing over into consumer territory all over the media landscape. “Look at a company like Salesforce, that’s a B2B brand, but yet it’s a brand that has made significant brand awareness efforts with everybody,” he said. Coupa’s done the same, by sponsoring segments in last year’s World Series and other major sporting events, even if it is largely seeking out a B2B audience (work that was handled by Apollo Partners).
But media agencies are also stepping into what’s already a crowded market, as various companies and ad-tech firms have already targeted B2B with their latest offerings. RollWorks, a SaaS supplier of account-based marketing (ABM) tools, is rolling out Accelerate, a new program designed to help B2B marketers at any point in their ABM efforts. ABM is widely considered a vital element to any B2B efforts as it connects sales goals with marketing efforts within companies so that one hand knows what the other is doing.
“We feel passionate about getting the efficiencies realized with the power of account-based marketing into the workflows of all B2B companies,” said Randi Barshack, CMO of RollWorks. “We are happy to work with companies directly (the majority of our customers) or with the agencies that service them.”
Amazon Prime Day is Tuesday, and Edge by Ascential offers a few relevant stats around what’s become a major retail/e-commerce opportunity for many, not just Amazon. They include:
“As we head into midterm election season, the goliaths of advertising (TV and online advertising) are undergoing the strongest headwinds in history. TV consumption is plummeting, and political news shows in particular have shockingly low reach — not to mention the $1 billion in CTV ad waste. Political advertisers should look to out-of-home advertising as an alternative: it’s privacy-friendly, has built-in brand safety, and is now measurable from an ROI perspective.”
— Matthew O’Connor, CEO of outdoor vendor AdQuick.com.
The post Media Buying Briefing: Media agencies embrace B2B and blend it with consumer-facing campaigns appeared first on Digiday.
Nearly two years after Instagram and YouTube first introduced their respective TikTok clones — Reels and Shorts, respectively — the three short-form vertical video platforms remain pretty identical. That has led to creators largely repurposing the videos they make for one platform by cross-posting them to the others.
But Digiday spoke to several short-form video creators who were able to parse the platforms’ differences and point out the pros of their similarities. For more, watch the video above.
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