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The food and snack maker Danone consolidated its video ad buying within the GroupM-owned agency Wavemaker and Google’s DSP, DV360, to control for frequency.
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When faced with a recession, brands should focus on fundamental changes that save money and drive efficiency while seeking ways to get more out of their data, technology and ad
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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Listening Ears Hear that? It’s the sound of TikTok doing the podcasting thing. Insider reports that TikTok is testing
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The digital creator business Goldenset Collective launched yesterday with $10 million in seed funding — including backing from Thirty Five Ventures, the investment firm of NBA star Kevin Durant. As traditional athletes increasingly bring their money and business acumen into creator-powered businesses, Durant is merely the latest to dip his toes into the space.
Goldenset is an incubator for digital creators, providing them with the funding and structural support necessary to convert their followings into sustainable businesses. It was founded by Darren Lachtman and Nick Millman, whose previous venture, the Gen Z-focused media network Brat TV, also counted Durant among its investors.
“I think it just aligned with how [Durant and his partners] think about the space,” Lachtman said. “It’s a combo of both knowing us from our previous work and also being interested in the creator economy as well.”
The rise of the athlete investor is nothing new. For decades now, traditional sports stars have been a major source of venture capital for businesses across tech, retail and media — though athletes’ investments have certainly ramped up since 2020. But as a new wave of businesses have arisen to take advantage of the growing influence of individual online creators, athletes have been some of the first movers in getting involved.
Durant is among a horde of current and former leading athletes who have invested in creator-centric businesses in recent years. In October 2022, NFL wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster invested in the esports company World Champion Fantasy; former quarterback Kurt Benkert invested in the esports organization Spacestation Gaming in April 2022; in December 2022, Caleb Williams, the winner of last year’s Heisman Trophy, founded the athlete image and likeness licensing business Hall of Goats to take advantage of college athletes’ growing prominence as content creators.
“The reality is that 98 percent of them don’t go pro, so we look at this as an opportunity for them to make money now, but also, hopefully, make passive income even beyond their playing years,” said Hall of Goats co-founder Greig Carlson, himself a former University of Southern California football player. His company’s efforts are supported by NCAA’s revised name and image licensing policy, which the organization updated in 2021 to give college athletes more opportunities to monetize their personal brands.
To some extent, traditional athletes’ interest in the creator space is due to their intimate understanding of what it takes to transform an individual into a brand. “Athletes have an outgoing personality, and they just get it: ‘this is me, I’m the product.’ They get that know-how to manage it properly,” said Ahman Green, a veteran NFL running back who is an investor in ESTV, an online streaming platform. “I learned that I’m not just a bottle of Heinz ketchup on the shelf — I have a brain, I can think.”
Athletes are arguably the original influencers, and during the height of COVID-19 lockdown, many turned to livestreaming to fill the void, leaving them with armies of loyal online fans even after they returned to the playing field. Armed with a firsthand understanding of the creator economy — and with lucrative athletic salaries — it is all but inevitable that traditional athletes will continue to invest in the space as the divide between athletes and digital creators continues to dissolve.
“What some of these athletes do is much more creator-like behavior, where they are similar to these more digitally native YouTubers,” said Millman, the Goldenset Collective founder. “This is going to be interesting — and over the next couple of years, I think there’s a high chance we end up working with some for sure.”
This week’s Media Briefing takes a look at how some publishers are tweaking their events calendar to hopefully maximize advertising revenue in an economic downturn.
The key hits:
Live events just recently returned as a revenue stream for publishers after the pandemic wiped out any chance for convening people together in-person. But now in the midst of an economic downturn, which has strangled advertising budgets, experiential ad revenue is once again at risk as advertisers get cold feet about pledging high-dollar budgets months in advance of the events actually taking place.
This hesitation from advertisers and media buyers was seen in the fourth quarter of 2022, when publishers were consistently asked to execute campaigns on shorter timelines and quick-hit ads like direct-sold programmatic were favored over custom branded content.
As publishers plan their 2023 events calendars, some are choosing to delay their biggest event franchises with hopes that this will improve their chances of selling related sponsorships. Others, however, are choosing to stick with initial timelines.
Spacing out events to ensure revenue
In November, Riva Syrop, president of Apartment Therapy Media, said during an episode of the Digiday Podcast that her team was receiving more RFPs that include events and experiential opportunities in the last few weeks than any other period in her career, which excited her about 2023’s potential for generating event revenue. And a few weeks into the new year, Syrop followed up with Digiday via email to say that two sponsors are already locked in for the publishers’ Small/Cool event that is taking place in the fall, representing about 25% of the revenue the company anticipates making from the event. She declined to share hard revenue figures from those deals.
“As we look at Small/Cool in 2023, we’ve pushed it to the fall this year for a couple different reasons. One is that we feel like consumers will be in a more comfortable place to spend,” Syrop said. But the other reason is, “we don’t want to force [advertisers] to commit to something” before they know what their experiential budgets for the year will look like. “Maybe [they] just need a little more time to figure it out.”
“It’s still early in the year – only 18 days in – and for clients that just started their new fiscal year, they’re still trying to figure out [what their budgets will look like],” said Jon Lefferts, evp of integrated investment at UM.
With Apartment Therapy’s tentpole event not taking place until the back half of the year, Syrop said that her team is creating standalone custom events for advertisers, creating experiential pop-ups in-store for retail sponsors and leaning on smaller franchises, like Dine By Design, to generate event revenue in the first half of the year when possible.
Forbes’ events calendar is “packed” this year, according to Sherry Phillips, the company’s chief revenue officer, with a denser concentration of events happening in the second half of the year and fewer taking place in the first quarter – an editorial strategy that Phillips said has been in place for years. But having a full slate of events doesn’t mean that advertising revenue will be coming in each and every time Forbes puts on a show.
“There are certain summits that we do that are not sponsored because we feel committed to the space [and to] the communities. If it’s a space where we feel like we need to [put] a stake in the ground and it’s not sponsored, we will have those conversations,” said Phillips, adding that many events in 2022 were produced without sponsors tied to them that were still deemed “successful” from an audience and community perspective, with revenue coming in through ticket sales in some cases.
That said, the tentpole events that are known to have major advertisers on board, like Forbes Under 30 Summit and Forbes 30/50 Summit, are spaced out throughout the year to keep big ticket deals coming to “help ensure revenue even when we’re predicting a potentially soft market,” she added.
Advertisers “really are planning month-to-month and week-to-week. It’s not quarter-by-quarter,” said Phillips. So while renewals for event sponsorships can, by nature, have a year’s lead time for planning and execution, first-time event sponsors aren’t always giving the typical six-month heads-up for campaigns.
“For tentpole events, we will see sponsors come in at the last minute. Under 30 is a great example of that where sponsors will come in [last minute] because they can trust the audience,” Phillips said. And for certain custom events, those fast turnaround times are becoming easier to execute with the Forbes on Fifth event space in Manhattan, she added.
“From an advertiser standpoint, [clients] are being smart – I don’t want to say careful, because people are spending – with their money,” said Lefferts. “You just don’t want to put down dollars that you can’t recoup and you don’t know what’s going to happen in two months [but] you’re [being asked to] put money down for six months in advance.”
According to Phillips, 80% of Forbes’ advertisers run campaigns on at least two of the publisher’s platforms, meaning that live event sponsorships rarely are sold in isolation but instead are sold alongside branded content campaigns, direct digital programmatic ads or other channels. “They’re not just focused on one event,” said Phillips.
Having elements of a campaign that extend beyond a typical event sponsorship is a crucial selling point for buyers, according to Lefferts, because during an economic downturn, any large-scale campaign that demands a large portion of a client’s budget will be “tougher to sell.”
Bloomberg Media’s CEO Scott Havens told Digiday last week that the publisher wasn’t pushing back its events calendar or rescheduling any events due to fears that they won’t be able to sell sponsorships against them given the economic downturn – mainly because there is usually one event happening per week in a calendar year and delaying one would become a logistical nightmare with planning and execution.
But the economy’s impact on event advertising could be a good way to thin out some of the competition, Havens said, while also revealing which franchises are expendable for advertisers.
“If you’ve got a really great event that matters and people want to go, you should be able to press through. It may not be the banner year that you hoped revenue wise, but it means something to people, it means something to sponsors,” said Havens. “But there’s also just a tremendous amount of media products out there that’s not good and not worth saving. And maybe some of those events that lost [the] one sponsor they kept it alive should go away permanently. Make it a little less crowded, because it is fragmented and confusing to the consumer.”
“Short-form vertical skits have been a core of the business for a bit now. I think it’s an incredible marketing vehicle for our brand and it’s a great monetization vehicle, because we use the same sensibility [and] the same team, when we’re working with brand partners.”
– David Spiegel, chief revenue officer at Betches Media, who spoke about the company’s short form, vertical video strategy on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast.
The Guardian’s ransomware attack in December that accessed the personal data of U.K. employees may have also impacted its U.S. staff, a Guardian spokesperson told Digiday on Wednesday.
The Guardian announced it had been hit by a “serious IT incident” on Dec. 21. Staff were told to work from home for the week, due to the impact to the company’s technology infrastructure. But that week turned into a month and in an update on Jan. 11, the Guardian said the personal data of U.K. employees had been accessed – but they did not believe U.S. and Australia teams were affected.
The Guardian’s 127 U.S. employees were informed on Jan. 13, however, that their data might have been accessed as well.
“Our investigation is complex and ongoing, and it is not yet possible to assess the impact fully. We know that personal data of Guardian U.S. staff may have been affected, including names, phone numbers, home/mailing addresses and email addresses. A credit monitoring service is in place for all Guardian U.S. staff, although we have seen no evidence that personal data has been exposed online, and so the risk is low. We continue to monitor for this,” the spokesperson said in an email.
The fact that the Guardian was hit by a ransomware attack – in which hackers get access to a computer system, often encrypt files and ask for money in exchange for handing over those files – also complicates the problem, and is likely a reason for the return to office date getting pushed back to early February, according to conversations with three cybersecurity experts. The attack was “most likely triggered” by a phishing attempt, according to the company’s executives, in which someone is tricked (usually by email) into downloading malware.
“Typically encrypted files have no way of being decrypted without paying a ransom to the attacker,” said cybersecurity author and blogger Graham Cluley.
That means if the Guardian doesn’t pay a ransom, it will have to rebuild the parts of its tech infrastructure that were impacted, said Jordan Scoggins, former IT director at Quartz. “If it’s affected more complex systems, the solution to rebuilding it becomes more time consuming and more difficult to recover from,” he said. – Sara Guaglione
>3 dozen: The number of media companies and sports leagues that Twitter is planning to run paid content sponsorship deals with in the first half of this year.
110,000: The number of new subscribers to The New York Times’s wellness newsletter, The Well, that signed up during the first week of 2023, thanks in part to its 7-Day Happiness Challenge series that dropped on Jan. 1.
100: The number of editorial jobs Reuters is creating after expanding its partnership with the London Stock Exchange and relaunching its paywall.
$10 million: The amount of money that Sam Bankman-Fried invested in Semafor, making him the largest outside investor (contributing 40% of the publisher’s initial funding). Semafor’s leadership is now planning to buy out Bankman-Fried’s stake in the company, according to The New York Times.
Publishers lament the removal of Twitter Moments as referral traffic dips:
Read more about publishers’ Twitter referral traffic here.
Digiday+ Research: Buzz aside, how are publishers and marketers really experimenting with blockchain?
Read more about the state of blockchain experimentation in the media industry here.
Some publishers’ podcast teams are still growing as they hedge their bets on the medium in 2023:
Read more about how publishers are growing their podcast teams here.
Digiday+ Research: Publishers see a big drop-off in optimism for 2023:
Read more about publishers’ waning optimism here.
A comedian may be the new host of CNN’s primetime 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. slot, according to Semafor. The network is considering a nontraditional approach to news, which includes having it reported in a comedic, talk show style by a comedian like Bill Maher, Trevor Noah, Arsenio Hall or Jon Stewart.
Robinhood is getting into the media business:
Trading platform Robinhood announced it’s launching an independent media brand called Sherwood, according to Axios. Media entrepreneur Joshua Topolsky, who founded the now-shuttered The Outline as well as co-founded the Vox Media-owned The Verge, will lead this new media venture. The launch will extend upon Robinhood’s daily markets newsletter, Snacks, as well as act as a branding and customer acquisition tool.
CNET’s new AI-written articles include errors:
CNET quietly started publishing articles written by an AI engine around November last year, using the byline “CNET Money Staff.” According to Futurism, however, the AI has made errors that were then published on the site.
Morning Brew’s future focus is on short-form video:
The Axel Springer-owned publisher Morning Brew announced it bought audio and video company Our Future, which produces short-form business content on platforms, reported Adweek. The financial details of the deal were not shared.
CoinDesk’s latest scoop is its own parent company’s financial troubles:
CoinDesk’s scoop on FTX’s sister company Alameda Research being on shaky financial foundation led to a cascade of problems for FTX, resulting in it filing for bankruptcy a week later. Now CoinDesk’s parent company, venture capital firm Digital Currency Group, is facing its own financial troubles and questions about its operations as part of the broader fallout in the crypto industry, according to The New York Times.
As the new year gets underway, yogurt brand Activia is beefing up its multicultural marketing strategy by increasing its media investment dedicated to Hispanic audiences in the U.S. with both diverse creators and media companies. The move is one of several by brands who are actively seeking out diverse audiences.
Since 2021, Danone North America, Activia’s parent company, has increased its spend on diverse marketing and advertising efforts from less than 1% of its total annual media budget to more than 4% this year.
“We launched an inclusive diversity paid media initiative where we really wanted to make sure we’re integrating and interconnecting the purpose and the profit,” said Michael Sallette, vice president of media, sponsorships and licensing for Danone.
The shift in spend comes after research revealed that Activia has gained popularity with Hispanic consumers, not just in the U.S. but across the globe. To better reach the new audience segment, Activia grew its investment in video content with Canela Media, a minority, woman-owned media company and also plans to invest more ad dollars with diverse creators and influencer networks.
“We want to continue pushing a full multicultural marketing effort that’s really inclusive across creative and media,” Sallette said. “Media being not just media ad placements, but also content creators and then some of the production companies that we would use along the way too.”
Activia isn’t alone in its efforts to appeal to more diverse consumers. Last year, Taco Bell announced a television spot talking specifically to Mexican Americans, employing Latin-focused talent in an effort to be more inclusive. And this year, Planet Fitness has committed to spending more on diverse audiences, rolling out spots on BET, Univision and Telemundo, as well as blogs like Blavity. These brands are looking to keep up with changing demographics and appeal to younger consumers as they come into buying power.
“As our audiences are becoming more diverse, and this is more important now not only to Planet Fitness, but the world and how things are shifting, we definitely want to be a part of those conversations authentically,” said Jamie Medeiros, Chief Brand Officer at Planet Fitness.
According to Pew Research, Gen Z is both more racially and ethnically diverse than previous generations in the U.S. More specifically, one in four Gen Zers is Hispanic, Pew reports. And as this generation comes into more spending power, marketers are taking notice.
In previous years, multicultural audiences were typically an afterthought, said David Vélez, strategy director at Remezcla, an independent Latin digital media company and creative agency. But within the last year and a half, that has changed.
“[Remezcla has] been around for 15 years. But in the last year and a half, we really have been brought to the table,” Vélez said. “There’s a process of really understanding this consumer because of the data that’s showing [Latinidad] importance and influence.”
The industry’s push for more inclusive marketing is a trend that’s expected to continue. “To me, it’s inevitable that it has to work. Because now, it’s not just a silo,” Vélez said. “The massive audience is reflective of a multicultural mainstream.”
For Activia, there are already plans to increase multicultural marketing efforts and expand the brand’s presence beyond Canela and into other media outlets with diverse audiences. According to Laurel Bright, marketing director of Danone, the company is also expanding its multicultural efforts to other Danone products, as well as launching a paid social campaign featuring Hispanic and African Americans.
“Essentially [it’s] seeing it as all integrated, that it’s not separate,” Bright said. “It’s about growing the pie and making sure that we connect with consumers in a very authentic way.”
Interested in sharing your perspectives on the media and marketing industries? Join the Digiday research panel.
Publishers didn’t see a big drop-off in traffic last year. But fewer publishers did see increases in traffic as they added to their ad offerings compared to previous years.
This is according to a December Digiday+ Research survey of about 70 publisher professionals.
According to the survey results, nearly half of publisher pros (46%) told Digiday that their traffic increased in 2022, which is a strong number but fewer than in 2021, when 57% of publishers said their traffic increased. More specifically, there was a significant drop in the percentage of publishers who said their traffic increased significantly in 2022: 7% said they saw significant traffic increases last year, down from 18% the year before. The percentage of those who said their traffic increased somewhat remained unchanged from 2021 to 2022 at 39%.
Meanwhile, the percentage of publisher pros who said their traffic decreased in 2022 went up compared with 2021. More than a third of respondents (35%) said they saw drops in traffic in 2022, down from fewer than a quarter (24%) in 2021.
It is worth noting that most of the respondents to Digiday’s survey at the end of 2022 ended up somewhere in the middle. Eighty-four percent of publishers said their traffic either increased somewhat, decreased somewhat or neither increased nor decreased last year, while few respondents chose the increased significantly or decreased significantly options on either end of the scale.
As fewer publishers saw traffic increases and more faced traffic decreases last year, Digiday’s survey found that publishers didn’t grow the number of titles they published but many did increase the number of advertising products they offered.
Most publishers kept the number of titles they published in 2022 the same, according to Digiday’s survey. More than two-thirds of publisher pros (69%) said the number of titles their companies published neither increased nor decreased last year — a jump from the 55% who said so in 2021.
Meanwhile, the percentage of publishers who said they grew the number of titles they published last year fell compared to the year before. A quarter of publishers said they increased their number of titles in 2022, down from more than a third (39%) in 2021.
Very few publishers said they cut their number of titles last year. Only 7% of respondents to Digiday’s survey chose this option.
Publishers’ actions regarding ad products last year were a bit of a different story than titles.
More than half of publisher pros (54%) told Digiday that the number of ad products their companies offered increased in 2022. This is definitively more than the 37% who said they neither increased nor decreased their ad products and the 8% who said they decreased their ad products last year.
However, that 54% is down from the 61% of publishers who said they grew their ad products in 2021. And even last year, the increase in ad products was small: 47% of publisher pros said their ad products increased somewhat in 2022, compared with only 7% who said they increased significantly.