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Investors may be few and far between in ad tech these days, but that doesn’t mean the same can be said for deals. There are still many of them to be done. Not just for the right price, but increasingly for the right investor. Namely, the strategic ones; those that aren’t just in it for the money.
For many of these businesses, it’s a good moment to put their corporate development teams to work.
There are fewer private equity investors to compete with, for starters. And many of these strategic investors are currently sitting on millions of dollars of uninvested funds. Better to put that money to work, the thinking goes, since organic growth is so hard to come by these days. Look at the recent flurry of deal activity for proof.
Publicis Groupe figured the old ways of running a profitable ads business are still the best ways so it acquired affiliate network Vivnetworks earlier this month. Ad filtering firm Eyeo doubled down on that most surest of business models — a two-sided marketplace — when it bought a business that helps publishers recover revenue lost through ad blocking a few weeks back.
If that wasn’t indication enough of where the momentum is in dealmaking in ad tech, MiQ is also on the lookout for companies that can bolster its businesses on the back of an influx of capital into the business. Speaking of strategic opportunism, Samba TV swooped in for artificial intelligence startup Disruptel at the turn of the month.
The list goes on. Criteo, S4 Capitali, Lumen, Cavai, Ascential and OpenWeb to name a few. Different names, same story: deals done by companies that have fared relatively well to date in the downturn, as in their share prices have held up and their balance sheets remain solid.
Expect more, not less, of the same thing next year. That forecast came through loud and clear at an event hosted by investment firm First Party Capital earlier this month. The logic here is pretty simple: downturn or not, so long as a deal remains accretive it’s going to be one of the fastest ways to increase market share in existing areas or to expand into newer ones.
“This is the time for these businesses to go on the offense,” said Joshua Wepman, md of technology investment banking at Houlihan Lokey at the same event.
This doesn’t mean the M&A boom times are back. The scarcity of deals has put paid to that. Rather, the white hot acquisition vibes that engulfed the previous M&A cycle in ad tech have been replaced by something more measured. Remember, few businesses can afford to make big bets now in the current economic and regulatory climate.
Sure, Criteo’s bet on ad tech developer IPONWEB is undoubtedly a big one, but it’s an outlier in a raft of lower key, strategic acquisitions and partnerships this year. Additive, not transformative, seems to be the underlying rationale for a lot of the deals these days.
It certainly was for the likes of Publicis that have focused recent M&A efforts on older marketing efforts it knows marketers will continue to spend dollars against.
Granted, tried and true isn’t the only route for companies on the acquisition trail. Other investors like Integral Ad Science and Azerion are making calculated gambits on how where the ad dollars are going to fall once the market shakes out, eyeing the areas du jour like CTV, retail media, gaming and identity as investment opportunities.
Combine all this with the fact that the U.K. government’s now infamous “mini budget” has caused sellers’ price expectations to drop and buyers’ views on value to widen, and it’s clear that this is a more pragmatic wave of M&A.
Keep in mind that this is a liberal use of the word “pragmatic” given the moves made by the venture capital firm-cum-ad-funded entertainment business Azerion. So far this year it has done eight deals, continuing a buy-and-build strategy it has employed since it was founded in 2015. For the dealmakers at Azerion, the pace of M&A remains high and the funnel is well filled.
“The mindset in the market has switched from one where it was hard to get real, concrete deals done because of high valuations to one where people want to get deals done now rather than wait to see how the economy develops,” said Joost Merks, group chief investment officer at Azerion. “That’s been more noticeable since the end of the summer.”
But the fun doesn’t stop once the deals are done and dusted. There’s the thorny challenge of integration to work through. Doing so is far from straightforward for buyers. There are too many dashed hopes and wistful hot takes to say otherwise.
“Transparency and trust is the key to a good integration as in the whole thing starts with both sides being willing to open the kimono,” said Grayson Lafrenz, founder and CEO of Power Digital, which has recently completed four deals. “There are a lot of companies that don’t do that. They’re very transactional as in that they do the deal and then it’s on to the next one. Once a deal closes the work has only just begun. You have to make sure that the thesis happens.”
This week’s media briefing looks at how publishers’ Black Friday and Cyber Monday commerce content performed compared to 2021.
The key hits:
Black Friday drove more than $9.1 billion in online sales this year — a new record, reported CNBC — and publishers’ commerce businesses seemed to generally benefit from this 2.3% year-over-year increase.
Many publishers who use affiliate networks like Skimlinks and Rakuten won’t know for about a week after the end of the holiday shopping weekend just how much money they made from affiliate commerce commissions. Attribution for the sale doesn’t happen at the moment of transaction, but once the item is processed and shipped, said Riva Syrop, president of Apartment Therapy Media.
What publishers are doing, however, is using their traffic numbers, click-through rate data and number of conversions made from their affiliate links to decipher just how many transactions this year’s Black Friday through Cyber Monday period generated compared to years prior. And so far, they say, anecdotally, that those signs indicate another successful Q4, despite the economic downturn.
“We did not know what to expect going into this weekend because there’s been a lot of uncertainty and November was often a little bit of a slower start for us,” said Emily Silverman, vp of commerce at Hearst Magazines, who did not provide figures to illustrate this slowdown. She surmised that fewer retailers were emphasizing the need to order products earlier this year than they did in 2021 when supply chain issues were causing shipping delays.
Black Friday weekend ended up being a successful period for Hearst Magazines, with total product sales increasing by about 50% year over year, though Silverman declined to share hard numbers here either. The average order value was consistent with years prior, she added, but even that was unexpected. She did not say what this number represented.
“I was surprised by that because I did hear from our commerce editors that the deals were deeper than ever so I anticipated that that might have an impact on [average order value],” Silverman said.
Eve Epstein, svp and general manager of Leaf Group’s Hunker, was also unsure of what to expect. “The results that we have seen so far are very much in line with our expectations [that we] set going into 2022 [which is] overall great news,” she said, adding that she expected the economic headwinds to impact how much consumers were willing to spend this holiday season. “That really hasn’t borne out in our data,” she said.
Revenue earned through Hunker’s commerce content the weekend of Black Friday and Cyber Monday growth was up 33% year-over-year, Epstein said. And total order value across Hunker and Well+Good (Leaf Group’s editorial brands that drive the company’s affiliate commerce business) increased by 20 to 25% in November year-over-year, she added, declining to share specific numbers.
“Black Friday is no longer something that happens on Friday. Cyber Monday isn’t something that just happens on Monday. They shop when the sales are happening,” she said.
For Apartment Therapy Media, however, average order value for transactions made between Black Friday and Cyber Monday increased by 101% year-over-year, according to Syrop, who declined to share a hard dollar amount for average order value. She did add, however, that 80% of the sales made so far this quarter began last Tuesday, corresponding with the start of many retailers’ Black Friday sales.
“People were actively looking very early in the season, but I think they were waiting for the best deal in order to transact,” Syrop said.
During the week of Black Friday, Foundry’s U.S.-based brands — PCWorld, MacWorld, TechHive and Tech Advisor — saw a 57% increase year-over-year in the total dollar amount of all the product purchases referred to retailers from its sites. Meanwhile, the amount of money earned through affiliate commissions to Foundry increased by 110% year-on-year in the U.S., according to Jon Sullivan, editor-in-chief of PCWorld and TechHive, who declined to share hard revenue figures.
Future’s content drove over 130,000 e-commerce transactions on Black Friday alone, according to Simon Rawle, e-commerce director, retail at Future, who declined to share hard revenue figures as they had not yet been processed by the time of publication. How this will stack up compared to 2021 is still to be determined. Last year, the period spanning Nov. 18 to Dec. 1, which included Black Friday and Cyber Monday, drove more than 1.6 million e-commerce transactions, equaling $137 million — an increase of 19% from the same period in 2020.
With the uncertainty of consumers’ shopping habits in mind, things were done a little differently this year. Some publishers moved up the timelines for rolling out gift guides, while others took a different approach to content itself and where it was distributed.
Hearst, for example, added context around whether a retailer’s Black Friday sale was the lowest price ever, in an effort to contextualize how much of a money-saving opportunity this discount was for shoppers, according to Silverman.
Apartment Therapy revised its gift guide strategy to allow users to filter products by the recipient’s relationship to the shopper or favorite hobby — for example, recommending a Himalayan salt board for shoppers’ friends who grill.
“By enabling people to sift through to the type of gift that they’re looking for, we’re seeing these extraordinary click-through rates of like 17 to 20%,” said Syrop.
Syrop added that her team also started using banner ads in the Apple News app to promote commerce content, rather than trying to sell those spaces to advertisers. As a result, her team has been able to drive a few hundred thousand people to the company’s owned-and-operated platforms since they started experimenting in August, with click-through rates around .25%.
Future’s technology brands, including Tom’s Guide and TechRadar, started their Live Deals blogs earlier than years past, launching them on Oct. 31, said Rawle. This ended up being a “stand-out traffic driver” he added, proving the theory that “shoppers were keen to get more from their money this year” due to inflation.
“[2022 has] definitely not been my favorite year, if I’m being honest. It has been a slog. Advertising was very difficult. A lot of our normal, big partners pulled back in the back half. So we did fine this year, but I feel much more optimistic about what’s to come [in 2023] than what we’re coming out of.”
— Riva Syrop, president of Apartment Therapy Media in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.
A year ago, covering cryptocurrencies and investing in Web3 projects seemed like a good way for publishers to diversify their revenue. But since the spring, a steady series of bankruptcies, scams and other financial meltdowns have put the future of decentralized finance on thin ice, putting media companies’ blockchain ambitions in a fragile state as well.
Politico announced last week in an email to its readers that its inaugural crypto summit would be postponed from Dec. 1 to an undetermined date in 2023. The event was meant to be sponsored by Binance.US, a crypto exchange platform that, like many other crypto-endemic companies, has been navigating the recent economic challenges it is up against.
A Politico spokesperson declined to comment on whether the decision to postpone was due to its presenting sponsor backing out, but said that the decision to postpone any event is “a fairly routine occurrence.”
Meanwhile, Time is losing its primary Web3 advocate and leader, Keith Grossman, at the end of the year. Grossman, who has served as the president of Time for the past three-and-a-half years, is joining Web3 infrastructure company MoonPay in January. Time’s owner Marc Benioff, was an early investor into MoonPay and the companies will continue to work together for payment solutions on Time’s future NFT projects, according to an internal staff memo from Ian Orefice, president and COO of Time and Time Studios, that was shared with Digiday.
Time’s Web3 division, TIME3, and the company’s NFT community, TIMEPieces, will move under the oversight of Maya Draisin, chief brand officer of Time, who has been involved with the company’s Web3 initiatives since their inception at the beginning of 2021.
Despite losing their front man and the other troubles facing crypto at the moment, the new regime of TIME3 seems optimistic about the company’s ongoing involvement in this space — which makes some sense after it made over $10 million from NFT sales in the first year.
“We have seen the power of its community and the opportunity it presents to further integrate web3 solutions into the way we approach our customers and our business. We have also made significant investments and building upon these will continue to be a priority for us,” wrote Orefice.
$1 billion: The amount of revenue Future Publishing generated in 2022, a 36% increase year-over-year.
61%: The percentage of 136 senior media industry leaders who said their organization has largely implemented hybrid and flexible working options for staff, according to a survey by Reuters Institute.
$10 million: The amount of cost cutting NPR will need to make during its 2023 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. The nonprofit media organization is starting with a near-total hiring freeze in order to avoid layoffs.
CNBC to test increases on its subscription prices next year:
Read more about CNBC’s subscription tests here.
How Apartment Therapy’s Riva Syrop is pivoting its events business around the economic climate:
Listen to Syrop’s strategy here.
The Washington Post invests in climate coverage as its team expands to over 30 journalists:
Read more about the Post’s expanded climate coverage here.
‘Halloween is when Christmas ends’: A look at publishers’ pre-Black Friday commerce content playbooks:
Read more about how publishers approached their commerce content ahead of Black Friday here.
Women of color are effectively locked out of the U.K. news industry:
A new report commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and produced by audience strategy consultancy AKAS found that women of color are underrepresented within both news coverage and newsrooms themselves, according to the Press Gazette.
CoinDesk attracts possible buyers amid crypto crash:
There’s no formal sales process underway for crypto news publisher CoinDesk just yet, but the company has attracted interest from a range of potential buyers, including private equity firms and rival publications, reported Semafor. Until recently, the publisher was bringing in $50 million per year, but the proposed purchase price of $300 million seemed too low, per the report.
CNN faces more layoffs as Warner Bros. Discovery brings sets its cost-cutting plan in motion:
CNN contributors and full-time staffers are being informed this week whether they have a job with the company, according to an internal memo shared by The Hollywood Reporter.
Fort Worth, Texas journalists are striking against McClatchy:
The Star-Telegram union claims that McClatchy’s management has refused to bargain with them in good faith and as a result, they have launched an open-ended strike against the newspaper conglomerate, reported Poynter.
Dentsu has hired Brent Koning, a former vp of esports at Electronic Arts, as its global gaming lead and executive vice president.
The Japan-based agency holding group launched its gaming arm, aptly named Dentsu Gaming, in September 2021. By hiring Koning, a veteran game-industry executive with ample agency experience, the company has taken its next significant step into this expanding area of media.
Despite the rapid rise of gaming in recent years — or perhaps because of it — many brands and marketers are still confused about how to best reach the gaming community. At the moment, channels such as streaming, influencer marketing and in-game activations are all siloed under the gaming umbrella. Simply put, these are uncertain waters. Even so, Koning is equipped with the endemic industry knowledge needed to navigate them.
“Starting January, we will operate as one Dentsu, and gaming is a key organization-wide initiative that brings innovations from Japan and the scale, talent and reach of our international markets together,” Dentsu Chief Integrated Solutions Officer Masaya Nakamura told Digiday.
Koning’s first day at his new gig was Wednesday. To learn more about his new position at Dentsu and his vision for gaming advertising, Digiday caught up with the newly minted Dentsu exec before he jetted to Japan for onboarding.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
“There’s this void in advertising and media that really lacks gaming strategy. I’m not saying people are doing it bad, or doing good — it’s just that there’s a void. What I’m most excited about is setting right the horrible branding problem that is in esports, in gaming, in web3, crypto and the metaverse. Everyone’s using all of these words interchangeably. Our plan is to start from the ground up and rebuild the basis for what is gaming. My day-to-day is going to be first and foremost just education, and bringing our clients up to speed on what is happening.”
Koning’s focus on education shows how the composition of the gaming departments at holding groups such as Dentsu has changed over the past year. In 2021, smaller endemic agencies had an advantage over the larger holding groups due to their genuine, gamer-informed grasp of the space. By hiring endemic executives such as Koning to lead its gaming arm, Dentsu is looking to assert its gaming bonafides and become more of a teacher than a student.
“I mean, the industry can be lazy, right? It’s really easy to write a check to get something slipstreamed in an ad-served model. However, a partnership, which takes a little bit more people power, can have equally as big of an impact, if not more — it just takes longer. We see it in sneakers all the time: there are collaborations between two groups that you’d never expect, like a Swarovski/Adidas shoe. You see it, and you’re like, ‘oh, I get it.’ I believe those types of experiences will be a big part of the future as well.”
Although programmatic ads inside games can certainly help increase brand recognition among players, Koning’s comments reflect marketers’ mounting interest in in-game activations that more thoroughly integrate their brands into gaming fandom.
Swarovski is a perfect example. By helping design this year’s Fortnite Champion Series trophy, the company created a moment that was more memorable to Fortnite players than a more easily ignored in-game billboard. At the moment, it’s still much easier to track performance metrics for programmatic in-game ads than for this kind of bespoke brand integration. But as the industry’s measurement practices improve, custom brand partnerships will likely continue to grow in popularity.
“I want to be advertised to in the right way, with things that I like, which requires data-driven decisions, that are opt-in, around the things that are the most important for that consumer. So, if you advertise to me Dove Body Wash, that’s a miss, but Axe Body Spray is a win. As we start to use data more and more, and we start to use machine learning more and more — the less friction you can have with your consumer, the easier budgets become unlocked.”
Gaming creators are notoriously picky about the brands they work with, and matching a brand with the right gaming audience or influencer is key to the success of a gaming advertising campaign.
As brands demand more targeted information about the gamers they are reaching, game developers’ ownership of these virtual playgrounds is becoming an increasingly beneficial asset. Epic Games, for example, has access to a wealth of user information via Fortnite and other games built in Unreal Engine. In the metaverse, almost everything users do can be translated into useful information for brands. Game environments are essentially a dry run for this evolution of the internet.
For now, the industry still finds itself in a strange middle ground. The value of gaming as a marketing channel has become readily apparent, but many marketers still view gaming as an entirely separate audience and form of media, rather than a direct competitor to more traditional channels. If Koning does his job right, then it’s possible that his specific title — global gaming lead — might become obsolete at companies such as Dentsu down the line.
“It’s very similar to the way social media was 10 to 15 years ago, where you’d have a marketing plan, and then you’d have a social media plan. Nowadays, if you have two plans, you’d be fired; the social media plan is completely integrated into your marketing plan. I believe strongly that gaming is the next thing in that process, where your gaming strategy needs to be integrated into your marketing decks. When it is, I think companies and brands will succeed because their consumers will see that authenticity come through.”
As competition continues to heat up in digital video and creator marketing, some marketers and agency execs believe YouTube may have lost some steam in its effort to scoop up streaming and TV ad dollars.
While YouTube has worked to further build its reputation as a solid streaming offering, it’s only become more difficult for some marketers to decide which budget — social or video — to dedicate to YouTube, according to media buyers, who say the platforms bifurcated offering may work against it. At the same time, increased fragmentation in the marketplace coupled with stagnant ad budgets and increased interest in social media darling TikTok hasn’t helped.
“A lot of my lifestyle brands are obviously focused on growth within social; YouTube is viewed more as a video platform — more than just a community or social hub these days,” said Kyle Zvacek, group media director at the advertising agency Zambezi, adding that the focus on social platforms may have clients eyeing other platforms next year. “So as dollars get tighter in 2023, I think you’re going to put those dollars in more effective places that you see growth opportunities.”
The company’s ad revenue suffered last quarter, dropping 1.9% — likely in part due to the current marketing landscape in which advertising dollars are tight and stretched. And there’s TikTok, which marketers and agency execs say they are eyeing as the platform continues to grow and production costs for content on the platform can be minimal. A YouTube spokesperson declined to comment on this story.
“No doubt the global economic uncertainty is contributing to the decline in YouTube ad revenue, but it also seems YouTube may have gotten caught a bit flat-footed,” said Lauren Markaverich, director of media planning and buying at the global strategy firm Materia. “While they were putting enormous effort over the last several years toward stealing share from streaming services and linear TV alike, brands were busy testing and learning on TikTok and taking advantage of the enormous consumer interest in the platform.”
Markaverich continued: “Brands are now hooked [on TikTok] and it is seen as a critical part of their marketing ecosystem that they are likely not willing to cut from their plans.”
Due to TikTok’s rapid growth in the U.S., it has already overtaken other social media platforms as the most popular place to watch video content, according to the Pew Research Center. The platform is particularly appealing to young consumers, more specifically Gen Z, who are highly sought after by advertisers as a demographic. Since Facebook and Snapchat are no longer as popular to this demographic than they once were, reaching them through social networks other than TikTok has been challenging.
“Right now, every impression counts and rather than operating in crisis mode, most brands just want the reassurance that their investments are going in the right places and reaching the right people,” said Lauren Douglas, svp of marketing at the agency that focuses on YouTube, Channel Factory.
During the pandemic, YouTube focused on streaming ads because it wanted to take advantage of a boost in streaming, according to media buyers. After two years, the streaming bubble is starting to collapse as consumers evaluate their spending habits which may have advertisers reevaluate their spending on those platforms. With that being the case, YouTube’s straddling of streaming and social may be an advantage.
“They’ve [YouTube] been playing up that they are larger than TV, larger than Super Bowl, and they’ve had that kind of heritage for the last few years,” said Zvacek. “And I think they’re thinking that this is still the biggest investment to play with.”
As of 2022, the number of YouTube users in the United States is over 200 million, according to SEMrush, a website analytical tracking company. Despite the overall focus on streaming ad dollars, the platform does recognize the consumer shift to TikTok and is working to compete more seriously with Shorts, its own copycat short-form video feature of TikTok. While Shorts debuted in 2020, it will roll out its revenue sharing model next year which could help lure creators to the platform. Convincing them to come back will be crucial to YouTube’s future success, agency execs said.
Under the program, creators with at least 1,000 subscribers and at least 10 million Shorts views within 90 days of application, will be able to join the platform’s revenue-sharing program starting in early 2023. The revenue generated by these ads will be added together every month, and 45% of it will be paid to the creators of the Shorts.
Some content creators prefer TikTok over other social media platforms because YouTube hasn’t progressed beyond streaming — compared to other channels, said Erica Yang, CEO and founder of the advertising agency Real Hype Creative. “Many brands are making this observation and exploring the potential that new influencer spaces bring to their own audience engagement and creative strategy,” said Yang.
It’s not just the brands that have eyed other platforms. “The reality is a lot of those content developers on YouTube also have diversified their own ad revenue streams,” said Zvacek. “I can get the same content that I got on YouTube now on TikTok and not feel left out.”
That said, TikTok isn’t the only challenger for YouTube. Marketers and agency execs have more choice than ever when it comes to digital video opportunities and that bounty of choice may be part of the platform’s difficulties now.
“The marketplace is flooded with video inventory opportunities,” said Christa Carone, president of the digital advertising company Infillion Media, adding that she believes diversification across platforms helps brands target and retarget consumers. “The value still lies in the availability of brand safe content, precision and privacy-compliant targeting, compelling creative and measurable outcomes.”
Spotify Wrapped, one of the streaming platform’s biggest marketing campaigns of the year, is the gift that keeps on giving, both for users and Spotify’s marketing goals. The campaign’s integration in social media, and more recently Roblox, offers the platform a massive reach, thus boosting brand awareness and growing its user base.
It’s an awareness campaign that utilizes user data to serve up users’ favorite songs, albums and podcasts to be shared across social media platforms via the app, engaging more than 120 million users last year, according to Spotify. This year, Spotify has launched its Wrapped presence in Roblox, with the goal of tapping into an even bigger audience.
“There’s a reason why it’s such a company priority,” said Alex Bodman, Spotify’s global vp of creative. “We don’t just see an increased user base day on day. We also see a lot of people coming back to the platform.” (Bodman declined to offer further details around growth and usage.)
It’s unclear what Spotify’s ad investments are, as Bodman declined to offer specifics. According to Pathmatics, the streaming platform spent nearly $70 million on advertising so far this year, slightly up from the $66 million spent last year. Kantar reports that from January to September of this year, Spotify spent nearly $36 million on advertising, slightly down from the $46 million spent in 2021. In 2020, the platform spent more than $63 million on ads. (Kantar figures do not include social spend as Pathmatics figures do.)
Aside from organic social, the Wrapped campaign also leverages traditional out-of-home advertising and in-person experiences, including an illustration in Brooklyn.
“We have this engine now that allows our listeners on Spotify to amplify their love for the brand to their friends and everyone on their socials. That’s the importance of it,” Bodman said.
Spotify Wrapped, which has been around since 2015, was created in-house at Spotify. Over the years, Wrapped has become an anticipated event, namely across Twitter and Instagram, where Spotify users post branded content in an organic word-of-mouth style of marketing, Bodman said. Now, with a presence in Roblox, there’s an opportunity to reach a younger, newer generation of potential Spotify users.
“By going into Roblox, where random people can show up and discover the Spotify Wrapped experience, you open the door to a whole new set of relationships,” said Mitch Ratcliffe, partner at Metaforce. With nearly 50 million daily active users last year, Roblox is becoming a bigger part of the conversation for marketers looking to reach new audiences, according to previous Digiday reporting. “It’s a great way for [Spotify] to have opened a point of entry to the Spotify brand,” Ratcliffe added.
At a time when user data is becoming increasingly more precious (thanks to data privacy initiatives and an impending cookieless future), Spotify’s Wrapped strategy has seen copycats in Apple Music Replay and YouTube Music Year in Review. It’s a strategy that works because “that touch point becomes a solution to return engagement in a cookieless world,” Ratcliffe said.
Tom Kelley, CEO and partner at The Revival House creative agency, agreed, noting that the personalized user experience is more meaningful, relevant and, thus, sharable.
“It’s entirely self-created by Spotify and has become a cultural norm — so much so that there are numerous other brands attempting to deliver similar, year-end data as well,” Kelley said in an email to Digiday. “It’s a way to humanize data and make it individually relevant.”
By leveraging its engaged user base, Spotify is creating a community of many trusted influencers, Andrew Roth, founder and CEO of dcdx, a Gen Z research and strategy firm, said. “The one-to-a-million reach of the influencer is very different than the 100-to-a million reach that happens from the local community. It’s more trusted and more influential,” he added.
Wrapped is and will continue to be an important marketing moment for Spotify, as it’s a way for the platform to amplify awareness, reach new audiences and reengage users, per Bodman. He added that Wrapped will stay in the platform’s marketing rotation.
“Everything from reactivation to new users, it’s a huge business driver and that’s why the company rallies around,” Bodman said. “We will continue to push it.”
Consumers continue to spend amid rocky economic footing, and brands and retailers are feeling good about how revenue is shaping up heading into the all-important holiday season, according to data from Digiday+ Research.
Despite the current economic climate and perhaps not surprisingly following a record-breaking Thanksgiving shopping weekend, Digiday’s survey of 32 brand and retail professionals found that the majority of respondents expect revenue to increase during the holiday season over last year — albeit only slightly.
According to Digiday’s survey, 60% of brand and retail pros said they expect their 2022 holiday revenue to be higher than their 2021 holiday revenue. Meanwhile, 28% said they expect holiday revenue to be down and 9% said they expect holiday revenue to be about the same this year. This is a clear sign of optimism in a pessimistic economic climate.
Breaking the numbers down further, however, reveals that most of the optimism is not particularly enthusiastic. Slightly more than a third of respondents to Digiday’s survey (38%) said that holiday revenue will be up only slightly this year, coming in at between 1% and 10% higher than last year. Only 6% of brand and retail pros said they expect 2022 holiday revenue to increase between 11% and 30% over 2021, and 16% said they expect holiday revenue to jump by more than 30% this year over last year.
After the 38% of brand and retail pros who said they expect holiday revenue to be up slightly this year, the second-most popular response was those who said they expect holiday revenue will be down slightly — another sign that the optimism brands and retailers are feeling isn’t exactly overwhelming.
Exactly one-quarter of respondents to Digiday’s survey (25%) said they expect 2022 holiday revenue will be between 1% and 10% lower than it was last year. Only 3% said they expect holiday revenue to decrease between 11% and 30% from last year, and, interestingly, no one responded that they think holiday revenue will be down by more than 30% this year compared with last year. So any pessimism that brands and retailers are feeling isn’t exactly overwhelming, either.
Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel.