Month: October 2022

When it comes to brands, only 7% of respondents to Digiday’s survey said they spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budget on Amazon and other retail sites including Walmart, Target and eBay. However, 24% of brand pros said they are confident or very confident that Amazon drives marketing success. Ten percent said they are confident that other retail sites drive marketing success.

Digiday’s survey found that there is also a discrepancy between agencies’ ad spend on Amazon and other retail sites and their confidence in the channels — but even more so. Even fewer (5%) of agency respondents said their clients spend a large or very large portion of their ad budgets on Amazon. That percentage drops to only 2% for other retail sites. But almost half of agency pros said they are confident or very confident that Amazon drives marketing success for their clients, and 26% said so of other retail sites.

The vast differences between the confidence brands, and especially agencies, have in Amazon to drive marketing success and the ad spend that’s actually happening on the channel are indicative of the potential Amazon has that isn’t being harnessed quite yet. And it’s likely that if brands and agencies are starting to catch onto Amazon’s marketing potential, other retail sites aren’t far behind.

Other than Amazon, Digiday’s survey specifically mentioned Walmart, Target, eBay, Best Buy and Kroger as additional retail channels that brands and agencies are investing in. Among the brands who said they dedicate some of their marketing budget to other retail ad platforms besides Amazon, here is how they ranked the other options:

1. Walmart
2. Target
3. eBay
4. Kroger
5. Best Buy

And among the agencies who said their clients dedicate some of their marketing budget to non-Amazon retail ad platforms, here is how the other options shake out:

1. Walmart
2. Target
3. eBay
4. Best Buy and Kroger

While retail sites are not yet a major player in brands’ and agencies’ marketing spend, it’s clear that these groups’ confidence in retail ad platforms makes the channel a space to watch in the coming months – particularly as uncertainty grows.

Some companies have begun developing their own original TikTok sounds in the hopes of going viral. Pepsi announced a partnership with singer and actress Chlöe Bailey on Tuesday to release a new version of the song “Footloose,” encouraging TikTok users to join a dance challenge using the sound. Meanwhile, American Eagle and TikTok singer Katherine Li teamed up to create a custom version of her song “Happening Again” as part of its back-to-school campaign. Pizza Hut also collaborated with Jon Moss, a TikToker with nearly 7 million followers, to create a Detroit-inspired anthem to celebrate the return of Detroit-Style Pizza. 

TikTok sounds are a crucial aspect of the platform. Viral sounds on the platform, such as Harry Style’s “As It Was” or Cookiee Kawaii’s “Vibe (If I Back It Up),” have been used in a total of over 3.6 million videos but brands don’t always have access to them due to licensing issues. In order to navigate through the legalities, retailers have begun partnering with artists and launching challenges on TikTok to reach more consumers. 

When a creator uploads a video on TikTok with an original sound, other users can essentially use that sound to create new videos of their own. A sound goes viral as more people use the original sound. For brands, a viral sound offers visibility and a higher likelihood for them to reach more users’ “For You” pages. Some retailers have launched dance challenges along with the original sound in an attempt to get people to add their own twist to the original video.

“TikTok sounds have been important since the beginning,” said Alessandro Bogliari, CEO and co-founder of marketing firm the Influencer Marketing Factory. “Brands can actually use it to their advantage because the algorithm tries to push what is working.” 

Using original sound or music as an advertising tool isn’t new. In fact, retailers have been creating catchy jingles on television and radio for decades to drive brand awareness and consideration. However, on TikTok, marketers have to adjust to a platform’s short-video format, its ever-changing trends and work with its unpredictable algorithm. 

Many of the brands partnering with artists for TikTok songs are trying to recreate what has already worked. For example, American Eagle — much like Pepsi — is remaking a song that gained some attention on the app. Li, who has over 400,000 followers on the platform, released snippets of the song on TikTok, with one video gaining over 10 million views.

But that doesn’t always mean the song will be a success. Right now, a little over 100 videos currently use The American Eagle version of the song. 

Making the algorithm work for brands   

Experts said there is no recipe for a viral TikTok sound campaign. But the possible benefits could be worth the investment. 

E.l.f. Cosmetics, for example, launched its first original song on TikTok in 2019 called “eyes.lips.face. (e.l.f.),” which features artist Holla FyeSixWun and songwriter iLL Wayno. The #eyeslipsface campaign now has 9.6 billion views under the hashtag and 1.4 million TikTok videos were made using the song. Influencers like James Charles and Addison Rae as well as celebrities like Lizzo had even joined in to use the sound.

E.l.f. told Glossy in an interview in 2020 that it had used paid advertising to give its #eyeslipsface campaign a boost. However, it did not use paid advertising for its follow-up campaign #elfvanishingact featuring its second original song. Sales for the company’s lip exfoliator, gentle peeling exfoliator and bite-sized eyeshadows had gone up as a result of its viral campaigns.

“What we’ve seen since that moment is a lot of our products have gone viral,” E.l.f. CMO Kory Marchisotto said at the time. “We tracked them before they went viral on the campaign, and since they went viral on the campaign, we have seen anywhere between two- to six- and sometimes eight-times more sales.”

TikTok users have also had a history of bringing back old songs, such as Miki Matsubara’s “Mayonaka no door (Stay With Me).” Pepsi’s version of the 1984 song “Footloose” could be an attempt to tap into nostalgia. The soda giant said it was inspired by the Footloose trend that went viral on the app this summer. 

“It’s simultaneously a throwback, but a new version of the jingle,” Ryan Detert, CEO of influencer marketing firm Influential, said about retailers’ use of sound marketing on the app. “A lot of dances go along with certain sounds because that becomes the zeitgeist, that becomes the UGC [user-generated content] moment.”

Ali Fazal, vp of marketing for creator management platform Grin, said that brands and retailers could also end up alienating their core customers in their attempts to jump on trends or appeal to a younger demographic on the app. Additionally, companies should have a team that’s following TikTok trends closely. Otherwise, they run the risk of appearing out of touch.  

“If you’re not truly plugged in, you probably will use the sound incorrectly,” Fazal said. “You might create content that doesn’t feel fully authentic.”

Fazal said that marketing campaigns on the platform that are “very obviously a sponsored ad” don’t resonate well with many TikTok users. 

“The amazing thing about TikTok and the algorithm is that there is no predictability,” he said. “So it requires every brand to have a very diverse creator management strategy in order to be successful.” 

Replicating E.l.f.’s viral moment remains a challenge, experts said. Even E.l.f.’s second original sound “Vanishing Act” pales in comparison to its initial release with just 639 videos using the song. Still, experts said they expect retailers to continually make attempts. 

“It’ll become more and more prevalent and necessary,” Influential’s Detert said. “There’s no path that is going to go the opposite direction.”

The campaign, “Para Tu Proximo Paso” — which in English is “For your Next Step” — debuted last month and is now running across connected TV, YouTube, social media and out-of-home ads in Miami, Houston and Dallas. Although Square has had some materials available in Spanish for years, Square chief marketing officer Lauren Weinberg said it wasn’t consistently available across all of the company’s products and services. Although it has been expanding internationally in Spain and elsewhere in Europe, “Para Tu Proximo Paso” is the company’s first campaign specifically for Hispanic consumers in the U.S.

“We wanted to portray business owners that are on the verge of taking an important milestone,” Weinberg told Digiday. “So not people that are maybe just getting started, but who are really contemplating what the next steps should be for them.”

To convey this, Square created characters who are archetypes of various business owners. In one ad, a music store owner is deciding on where to open a second location. In another, a restauranteur decides to sell one of her signature dishes online.

Square also is using Meta’s native ad-targeting features on Facebook and Instagram to target Spanish speakers. The strategy is a reflection of changing times: using social media to reach audiences based on criteria like race or ethnicity is no longer an option. Last year, Facebook banned ads targeting people based on race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation — a move that came amid growing concern around how personal information deemed as “sensitive” could put people at risk of discrimination or violate user privacy.

Social media ad prices have increased “a lot” in the first half of 2022, according to Weinberg. Although she didn’t share specific CPM rates, Weinberg said weaker ad-targeting tools have also led to more “wasted [ad] impressions.” However, Square has been able to drive better results by making more creative assets. (She added that marketplace competition is at least somewhat lighter now than earlier in the year.)

“We’re really going much broader in our targeting and then allowing the platforms to make the optimizations,” Weinberg said. “I think in the past, we were a lot more prescriptive, but in the future, we really need to let the algorithms do their work on their end because there’s just less that we know about customers going into it.”

Square isn’t the only company to reach Hispanic consumers with Spanish-language websites. Amazon debuted a Spanish-language version in 2017 and Walmart added Spanish search capabilities last year before expanding them this past summer.

Cross-cultural marketers with experience helping brands reach Hispanic audiences say it’s smart of Square to create a Spanish-language campaign. Aldo Quevedo, CEO and creative chairman of the cross-cultural marketing agency BeautifulBeast, said companies often either “mirror messages” or “magnet messages” when trying to reach cross-cultural audiences. Although mirror messages might speak to consumers in their language, magnet messages create relevancy by making people feel understood.

“When you talk about a magnet brand — which is something that is more attractive as the name says — it’s really something about you,” Quevedo said. “A brand knows you and knows what you’re going through in life and all that.”

However, that doesn’t mean the marketing has to be in Spanish, he said, adding that focus groups his agency did for an undisclosed insurance brand found that some Spanish speakers worried that Spanish-language materials offered a worse deal than those in English. (He added that targeting for only segmentation can be dangerous without context.)

Rather than focus too much on translation, cross-cultural marketing should focus on “transcreation,” according to Hernan Tagliani, president and founder of The Group Advertising.

“It’s not about re-inventing the wheel,” he said. “You don’t need to create different campaigns. They have to be aligned in the market so they don’t look like two separate campaigns, but the message has to be for the audiences.”

Square isn’t the only financial services company either marketing specifically to Hispanic business owners. Last year, QuickBooks worked with the Latino-founded agency Alma to create its first campaign aimed at Latino small business owners. (Quickbooks and Alma then released a second campaign this summer.)

If Square’s able to reach Hispanic business owners, it could be good for business. A recent survey of 2,700 Hispanic small business owners conducted by Square and the small business platform Hello Alice found that access to capital, acquiring new customers and marketing were among respondents’ top challenges. The report, released on Wednesday, also mentioned that Hispanic owners were more likely than other groups to mention marketing as a challenge while around half mentioned paid advertising and social media as “potential growth areas.”

Angela Rodriguez, head of strategy at Alma, said companies that market directly to Hispanic audiences stand out, especially since there are so many financial services firms to choose from. She said there’s an opportunity for Square to grow with new consumers while providing value to many Hispanic business owners that might not be native English speakers.

“There are just so many spaces in the economy being led by Hispanics and having their entire point of sale system in Spanish,” Rodriguez said.

After G2 Esports reportedly lost its Valorant partnership with Riot Games due to its CEO’s association with right-wing influencer Andrew Tate, for example, Evil Geniuses stepped in, becoming the final organization to secure a partnership slot in the game’s Americas league.

“Riot loves [Evil Geniuses CEO] Nicole [LaPointe Jameson]; what she stands for and what she wants to do within the industry,” said the organization’s vp of operations and studio John Jung. “I don’t know that us versus G2 is necessarily the comparison, but I think all of us here at EG — I don’t know if I would really feel safe at any other org, because I know in my bones that something like what happened at G2 would never happen here.”

EG executives said they have found that their DEI-imbued reputation has also made it easier for the org to recruit influencers and team members from marginalized groups, such as Joshseki, a streamer recently signed by the org, who happens to be a gay Asian man and has developed a reputation for his humorous roasts of misogynists in the gaming community.

“When they enter into negotiations or conversations with creators of color, of different genders than cis white men, there’s an inherent understanding of what they’re about that is wildly beneficial,” said esports journalist Jacob Wolf. “If you’re a successful woman or person of color or trans person who’s influential in the gaming space, and an opportunity comes from Evil Geniuses vs many of the others, you’re going to take it a little more seriously up front.”

It helps that LaPointe Jameson, EG’s CEO, is one of the few Black female executives to hold a leading role in esports. While many esports orgs these days are trying to align themselves with DEI concepts for financial gain — even the edgy FaZe Clan had a diversity-focused partnership with McDonald’s last year — LaPointe Jameson’s consistent work to make Evil Geniuses a diverse brand and accepting workplace legitimizes Evil Geniuses’ claim to that mission.

Evil Geniuses’ commitment to diversity is reflected by both its hiring practices and its actions. The company signed partnerships with the advocacy groups Women in Gaming and Games for Change last year, and its Valorant partnership application website specifically highlights its investment in female creators. The org has produced podcasts centering LGBTQ perspectives in esports and has worked with YouGov to author a report about sources of toxicity within the gaming community.

“We applaud teams for their DEI efforts and celebrate their achievements in making esports a more inclusive space overall,” a Valorant Champions Tour Americas spokesperson told Digiday when reached for comment. “We’re looking forward to seeing and supporting their growth in 2023.”

In addition to LaPointe Jameson, Evil Geniuses has also hired women and individuals from other marginalized groups to a number of executive positions, most recently hiring Antonia Bonello over from Buzzfeed as its first global creative director.

“I would say that EG is one of the only esports teams in the entire industry that is led by a female and Black CEO,” said Rod Breslau, a longtime esports journalist and industry observer. “So of all the teams that are trying to do things, EG, and then previously FlyQuest, whose CEO did leave recently for Cloud9 — those organizations that have put women at the head of the table, it means something more from them.”

Evil Geniuses is not the only esports organization to center messaging of diversity and equity in its branding, although it is perhaps the most prominent org to do so. Other examples of organizations that have elevated women to leadership roles include the aforementioned FlyQuest, where Tricia Sugita served as CEO until June 2022, and XSET, which employs Erin Ashley Simon as a co-owner and chief culture officer.

As the more controversial or unsavory side of esports rears its head, organizations that focus on DEI in a genuine way will continue to benefit from others’ missteps.

“We have just been quietly always this organization, and now it’s sort of coming to a point where brands really want to step into that light more,” said Avelina Daum, EG’s global head of brand marketing and communications. “And I think, for us, we naturally do it even without talking about it, so it becomes a very easy conversation, from a partnership angle.”

A number of brands in the U.S., such as SKYY Vodka, Grey Goose, and the Brewers Association, are taking steps to engage Gen Z drinkers over the age of 21 who are interested in alcohol.

“Now that they’re out of university, it doesn’t mean they can’t be spontaneous anymore,” said Madison Rogers, creative strategist at FUSE Create. “These ads do a good job at illustrating all the different occasions Fireball can be enjoyed and challenge the status quo.”

Fireball created three ads with the help of the ad agency Circus Maximus, which credits 10 employees that worked on this campaign.

“Our hope with this campaign is to become the number one most preferred spirit brand with Gen Zers by reaching fans and potential fans via engaging creative that speaks to them on an emotional level, drives increased awareness and inspires them to reach for and demand Fireball when they are looking to create a memorable experience with friends,” said Danny Suich, global brand director at Fireball.

In addition to being shown exclusively on YouTube and Instagram, Fireball’s ad spots, titled, “Free Your Fire,” will also be shown on digital streaming sites that will help drive reach with precision, Suich said, such as YouTube TV, ESPN, Hulu and Peacock where Fireball consumers are spending time online.

The 100% digital ad campaign is prioritizing digital video, with the leftover going to paid social and creator partnerships. Suich did not give an exact breakdown in spend, though the company spent close to $1.6 million so far this year on advertising efforts, according to Pathmatics data.

A new agreement with Barstool Sports that Fireball inked in September will also help promote the campaign, Suich said. The company will be the presenting sponsor of the daily gambling and sports show Picks Central and the trivia competition show The Dozen Live Tours in addition to targeting video and social across Barstool’s platforms. The exact agreement, including financial terms, were not made available.

“Fireball has identified a clear target consumer, young adults transitioning into a new life stage, and built a brand strategy around tapping into their emotional needs,” said Marisa Mulvihill, partner and head of brand and activation at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting firm. “It likely also resonates with the segment of consumers who have fully transitioned into adulthood.”

The brand is using Instagram as its primary social media platform, as Fireball developed a more organic social media strategy earlier this year in anticipation of the new campaign, focusing on content that is culturally relevant and re-shareable. The strategy resulted in a 60% increase (from 783 likes and comments to 1,266) in average engagement on organic posts and a 50% increase (from 13,419 views to 20,663) in organic reach from between January to August, Suich said, citing internal figures.

Fireball also increased overall media spending by over 50%, though they could not disclose figures, and there are plans to increase it further in the coming months on digital channels. “We’re laser focused on effectively and efficiently driving reach, relevance and, ultimately, trial with Gen Z consumers,” said Suich. “To do that, we need to show up where we know they consume content with their devices and their viewing preferences.”

Take a recent instance in the U.S. in which the Federal Trade Commission sued ad tech vendor Kochava for allegedly selling location data that could track movements to domestic violence centers, reproductive health clinics and other sensitive places.

Intentions don’t always turn into realities. If they did, Kochava would have settled with the FTC. Instead, the ad tech firm has refused to settle over terms CEO Charles Manning said are “ambiguous.”

The sense of deja vu is palpable for anyone who follows these things closely. 

At the start of the year, it seemed like the future of the Transparency Consent Framework (TCF) — the IAB Europe-led, industry-wide attempt to standardize compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation — was grim. Data protection watchdogs said it was illegal in its current form. Obituaries for its imminent demise swiftly followed. Several months on and those claims look increasingly premature. That’s because a few weeks ago (early September) it became clear that the TCF’s fate would be decided by the European Union’s high court.

Or rather, Europe’s top court would give its verdict on whether data was unlawfully collected through TCF and if the IAB Europe is financially liable for any GDPR claim brought against the ad tech ecosystem as a result. It’s crucial given the appeals court will not deliberate on the future of TCF until these questions are answered. That decision won’t arrive for at least another year.

So much for assertive enforcement.

The problem with attempts to bring order to online advertising’s data industrial complex is how loosely written the rules are. There’s enough opacity in these regulations, whether its GDPR or the California Consumer Privacy Act, to give companies some wriggle room to argue that no offenses were committed. And that’s exactly what has happened.

Companies (by and large) followed the law, but not always the spirit of it. Call it an inconvenient truth. When regulatory change is announced businesses are left to interpret the new legal requirements and adapt their business models as they see fit. The result can be messy, confusing, and lead to numerous attempts to flout or circumvent the rules.

Of course, data privacy regulators were going to want to put down a marker. 

That’s not actually the issue for Kochava’s CEO. Manning understands reform is painful but necessary when it comes to data privacy. It’s the way the FTC has gone about pursuing those reforms that ruffled the ad tech exec.

“We’re seeking specificity and the FTC isn’t prepared to provide it,” said Manning.

For Kochava, the devil is in the details: The FTC wanted to Kochava to block sensitive location data but didn’t specify what that meant, said Manning. Had that specificity on locations been provided, Manning said he and his team would have been able to incorporate it (if it wasn’t already) into a product called Privacy Block they had built to do just that. Instead, that clarity never came, continued Manning.

“They [the FTC] said ‘no, that’s not how this is going to work’, and said they’d name out ‘sensitive health locations,’” continued Manning. “It left us with a question of how we get that specificity in a marketplace of data where what could be sensitive for one, may not be sensitive for another.”

Good luck trying to predict how this shakes out. 

Neither the FTC nor Kochava seem prepared to walk back their widely reported stances on the matter. So there’s every chance this gets decided in the courts. And even then it could go either way. Yes, there’s a precedent. Indeed, the FTC has cracked down on the potential use of sensitive data in ways that people may not be clearly aware of or expect. Then again, Kochava hasn’t actually been found to have used data on ‘sensitive health location’ this way, said Manning. And even if it had that wouldn’t be illegal.

There are currently no federal laws that oversee the data broker industry — a point that was brought into sharp focus last month when the FTC had the opening comments for its rules making process after it filed the lawsuit against Kochava.

Or to put it another way, enforcement from the FTC came before it actually had regulation to enforce. No surprise there. In a post-Dobbs world, the regulator is acting with more urgency.

If this proves to be a flashpoint for data privacy then history indeed rhymed with the uncertainty over the TCF in Europe. But unlike the tet-a-tet between Kochava and the FTC, TCF’s moment of reckoning was hardly unexpected. If anything, it was a surprise that regulators hadn’t moved on it sooner. Remember, TCF relies heavily on good actors and the industry’s desire to be compliant. Spoiler: not everyone is. Data brokers are still trading personal data, and the online ad industry is riddled with potential abuses.

“The TCF isn’t a soup to nuts, GDPR-compliant solution in so far as there are a lot of other things you’re going to need to do to comply with the law,” said the IAB Europe’s CEO Townsend Feehan. “What the Belgium APD [regulators] want is for the TCF standard to take on more compliant functionality, which we will undoubtedly do sooner or later. That said, the responsibility for data processing for advertising has to lay with the companies that process data.”

A transformation of this kind would saddle IAB Europe with significant new costs since it requires the development and ongoing operation of a technical accountability infrastructure. That could be a very tall order, if not impossible, given how the OpenRTB ecosystem functions today — a thought not lost on the IAB Europe. 

Wherever these lines in the sand are ultimately drawn could have major implications. They could either cement privacy watchdogs’ authority to regulate the space or severely hamper it.

Tis the season for sales

The key hits: 

• Retailers are trying to make October the primary shopping period for this holiday season to beat the impact of inflation on shoppers’ wallets.
• Publishers like Gallery Media Group are adjusting the timelines of their affiliate commerce content to accommodate these new shopping events. 
• Meanwhile Future is reformatting its product recommendation content after finding its audience is in search of a good deal.  

October appears to be the unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season this year thanks to several retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and Target, launching multi-day sales events, all of which are taking place during the next two weeks: 

• Target Deal Days is running Oct. 6 through Oct. 8
• Wayfair’s 5 Days of Deals is taking place Oct. 7 through Oct. 11
• Walmart’s Deals for Days is running from Oct. 10 through Oct. 13
• Amazon Prime Day (the second one this year) is happening Oct. 11 through Oct. 12
• Best Buy is starting its “Black Friday” discounts on Oct. 19 

But for publishers who bank on the affiliate commerce revenue driven by Black Friday and Cyber Monday (what are typically the marquee shopping days for consumers), this means the timeline for holiday-related commerce content has needed to move up as well – or else they run the risk of losing out on thousands of dollars worth of commissions. 

Take the first Amazon Prime Day of the year, which took place just three months ago in July. Future sold 347,000 products during the two-day period through its commerce coverage, totaling $26.4 million in total U.S. sales. ​​Hearst’s total Amazon Prime Day sales were up 87% year over year. Meanwhile, Leaf Group’s home and lifestyle publication Hunker experienced an increase of 130% year over year in revenue earned from Prime Day, while its wellness and lifestyle site Well+Good saw its Prime Day revenue increase by 120%. 

“These are really important days for our business,” said Ryan Harwood, CEO of Gallery Media Group, which publishes PureWow and One37pm. “These are moments to make spurts of revenue that aren’t necessarily planned for that could definitely change the landscape of Q4 revenue.” 

And publishers’ commerce businesses could use any sort of unexpected revenue this year given the slowdown of online shopping and rising inflation, which is making consumers think twice about their spending habits. 

As such, Future ran an audience survey of 2,676 people in June this year to figure out exactly how early its readers will begin holiday shopping this year to both inform content strategy as well as advertising strategy in the fourth quarter. The research found that inflation has caused consumers to look for more deals than in years past and to start their shopping earlier to beat price hikes, with 45% of respondents already having purchased some amount of holiday gifts. 

This research was conducted before retailers announced their October shopping events, but based on respondents’ sentiments around Black Friday this year – about 75% of shoppers plan on spending the same or more money this Black Friday compared to last year – these discounted shopping days will be a warm welcome. 

Future chief revenue officer Zack Sullivan said the publisher’s content teams have already started modifying their commerce articles to focus on the best value product rather than the best overall performing product, which could cost more money.

“People aren’t quite making that single big purchase in the same way. They are looking for the best deals, and so we’ve been able to change our content approach to reflect that, and it’s actually paying dividends for us,” said Sullivan. 

Gallery Media Group started planning for its holiday shopping content in August and kicked off production in September after seeing record sales from retailer events like Prime Day and Way Day (Wayfair’s tentpole sales event that took place April 27-28), according to Emily Kerr, the company’s svp of growth. This included investing more into editorial resources and increasing content output, though she declined to share exact year-over-year comparisons. 

As of now, Kerr said her team is planning to cover at least 10 retailer shopping events this season. 

“It’s like a content flywheel in the sense that [covering these shopping events is] good for our brand in general. It’s good for SEO. It’s good for traffic. It’s good for affiliate revenue,” said Gallery Media Group’s Harwood. And together, “it gives you an added incentive to really increase the output during that time frame.” 

Kerr added that, while she’s expecting the same big spikes in traffic and conversions during this season’s shopping events, “we’ve also seen in the past that shoppers get sale fatigue when there are too many big events in close succession.” 

Plus, with the uncertainty of a recession on the horizon and inflation’s impact on holiday shopping budgets, both Kerr and Harwood said that total commerce revenue earned from this period is hard to predict. 

What we’ve heard

“I can facilitate revenue growth by being client-centric and agnostic of business. I can take one client and have a conversation across the pond and not separate between B2B subscription or media solutions. My motivation is growth, but not specifically one versus the other because they complement each other.”

— Nicolas Sennegon, Politico EU’s chief revenue officer on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, discussing increasing the ARPU of clients and subscribers

Negotiation table-setting

The return to office (RTO) has been a major priority within negotiations between media companies’ unions and management in the past year. But despite more companies issuing decrees that employees work in the office at least a few days a week, unions’ other focuses, like pay and benefits, have bubbled back up to the surface of these discussions. 

Unions often have to come to the bargaining table with three to five priorities that are a “have to have,” said Jack Dickey, local representative at the NewsGuild of New York, which represents The New York Times. Since the pandemic, remote work has become one of those priorities, which has “necessitated us being creative with our bargaining approach,” he added.

“What we try to do in these fights [is we] try to make sure that return to office doesn’t stop us from having substantive discussions with the employer,” Dickey said. “We don’t want the employers to bog us down on this particular issue.” 

Media unions are actively negotiating with company management on other topics such as pay, benefits, hours, DE&I language, expanding hiring pools and banning the use of metrics in evaluating workers (such as traffic).

The New York Times’ union seems to be using RTO almost as a leverage point to get what they want. Members have communicated that they will not take part in a mandatory return until they have a complete contract, Dickey said. The Times Guild is in the process of organizing sub-committees to meet and address other issues as well. The Guild is actively fighting for pay raises and an improved and equitable performance review process.

“We talk about a whole bunch of things at the same time,” a Times Guild member said. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Unions affiliated with WGA, East are “currently engaged in multiple negotiations where return-to-office policies are on the table,” a WGA spokesperson said in an email. “Negotiating RTO policies remains a priority at a number of newsrooms.“ WGA is also working to complete open contracts where issues like salary and benefits are still on the table, they said. — Sara Guaglione

Numbers to know

3: The number of longtime C-suite execs to leave The Washington Post this year. Former chief product officer Kat Downs Mulder is joining Yahoo News as its svp and general manager. In July, The Post’s former chief communications officer and general manager of events, Kristine Coratti Kelly, joined CNN and in September, the media company’s former tech and data chief Shailesh Prakash joined Google.

52: The number of employees Recurrent Ventures laid off this week, which affected editorial and commerce roles within The Drive, Saveur, Popular Science and Task & Purpose brands, per Adweek.

DPS in review

The September 2022 edition of the Digiday Publishing Summit brought executives to Key Biscayne, Fla., to discuss the state of the media business. 

In the video below, Digiday’s media team recaps their top takeaways from the event, and media executives in attendance share the opportunities, challenges and industry trends that are top of mind for them at the moment.

What we’ve covered

How sportsbooks and publishers are rethinking the terms of content-based sponsorships:

• The start of the American football season is like ringing in the new year for the sports betting industry and this latest season seems to mark a new austerity era for dealings between sportsbooks and publishers.
• The marketing budgets that some sportsbooks are working with are a lot leaner than before.

Read more about the evolution of sports betting content partnerships here.

A year after coming under Axel Springer’s control, Politico’s Europe and North American businesses are closer than ever:

• Despite sharing a brand name and founder — Robert Allbritton — Politico U.S. and EU have operated as separate businesses until earlier this year. 
• Now, Politico EU’s chief revenue officer Nicolas Sennegon said the Washington, D.C.-based and Brussels-based teams have developed global ambitions.

Listen to the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast with Sennegon here. 

How publishers can prevent cyberattacks after Fast Company’s hack:

• A hacking scheme that hit Fast Company on Sept. 27 has kept the website dark for nearly a week as executives investigate. 
• The event should be taken as a warning sign to other publishers to take cybersecurity seriously, three current and former heads of technology at media companies told Digiday.

Read more about cybersecurity for publishers here.

Media employees face no consequences for ignoring return-to-office requests — yet:

• Despite increasing calls for staff to come back to the office this fall, many employees at media companies say they haven’t faced any repercussions for ignoring those requests.
• The lack of enforcement of these policies is likely due in part to unions’ pushback.

Read more about how publishers are handling the return to office struggle here. 

What we’re reading

TikTok will launch live shopping in the U.S.:

TikTok has been talking with third-party shopping technology platform TalkShopLive to build out live shopping on its social platform, according to the Financial Times. This comes just three months after the FT reported TikTok was abandonning its plans to expand livestream shopping in Europe and the U.S. 

Facebook is shutting down its newsletter service Bulletin: 

Meta announced it is shuttering Facebook’s newsletter subscription service, Bulletin, by early next year, according to The New York Times. The service, launched in June 2021, was meant to rival Substack’s model.

The New York Daily News shifts focus back to local news:

A memo went out to the newspaper’s staffers this week stating editorial priorities will be to cover local news, according to Axios. This change is reportedly supported by the paper’s new owners, Alden Global Capital, however the hedge fund has a history of firing journalists at local papers to maximize profits.