Month: February 2023

At least, not yet.

“Well, you just gave me a great idea,” said Beth Tomkiw, TMB’s chief content officer. “It’s so new … but we should be putting that in all of our [contracts]. We have steps in our process to check if anything’s been plagiarized, and that’s going to be an even murkier territory — unless we openly make a statement about that.”

Jill Schildhouse, a freelance writer and editor, said she had not received any communication regarding ChatGPT from the publications she’s worked with. And that’s left her in the dark as to those companies’ policies regarding content generated by artificial intelligence (though, it should be noted, she hasn’t been impressed in her recent experimentation with ChatGPT).

“I don’t know what any of my outlets’ stance is on AI content. How do they know that their freelancers aren’t submitting AI content? Are there plagiarism concerns? What other ethical concerns surround this? Outlets are going to have to come up with some type of guidelines around how it’s used, both internally … [and] with their freelancers,” Schildhouse said.

Alesandra Dubin, another freelance writer and editor, said only one of the roughly 15 publications she’s worked with had sent out a memo regarding ChatGPT. She declined to share which publisher, but Dubin said the company communicated an “explicit policy change, and there can be no usage of AI in contributed work.”

“There are a lot of unanswered — or unknown to me — questions about plagiarism or what’s expected of me under the contracts with the various outlets to which I contribute,” Dubin said. “Outlets really need to put some guidelines in place, and writers need to think long and hard before taking what appears to be the easy path. Because the second you introduce a major error into your content, you’ve lost your readers and that publication is probably never going to work with you again.”

Is the tech even there yet?

If freelancers are using ChatGPT to generate stories, they might actually be creating a path for their own demise.

“If I found out a freelancer was using ChatGPT, why would I pay that freelancer? Because I could just use ChatGPT myself,” said David Ewalt, editor-in-chief of G/O Media’s tech site Gizmodo. “If you were doing that, that’s not what I’m paying you for.”

Marc Lavallee, director of journalism at the Knight Foundation who deals with tech and product investment, agreed that AI technology shouldn’t be doing most of the work when it comes to writing. The technology isn’t that advanced yet, and it has the potential to make writers who use it seem obsolete.

“If the machine did most of the work, you should probably disclose that. But also if the machine did most of the work and you’re disclosing that, then what were you doing there?” Lavallee said.

But Forbes’ chief content officer Randall Lane and Eve Epstein, svp and gm at Leaf Group’s Hunker, both said they thought it was too early to have guidelines on the use of ChatGPT in place, especially since the technology isn’t advanced enough to generate a story worthy of submitting to an editor.

However, Epstein said heads of editorial teams do need to be thinking about how to communicate best practices with staff and freelancers alike. “I think it would be irresponsible not to be thinking about this stuff,” she said.

“Best practices emerge out of a lot of practice,” Lavallee added. “Right now is the time to be doing the practice to understand what those best practices are for organizations.”

‘The ethics of AI in the newsroom’

At the end of the day, transparency between a contributor and editor is key — and the arrival of ChatGPT doesn’t change that.

“I would think that the expectations should be clear with a freelancer — any work they submit would have to be their own original work, which I don’t think is too dissimilar from what the existing expectations are,” Joseph Lichterman, head of editorial and communications at The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, said in an email.

But there’s also a spectrum when it comes to ChatGPT use, Lavallee said. For example, using it to generate a headline is different from using it to generate the bones of a story. So the question becomes, to what degree is a freelancer’s use of ChatGPT acceptable, and at what point have they gone too far?

“One of the things that is tricky now and is going to continue to get trickier is trying to establish thresholds,” Lavallee said.

Alex Mahadevan, director of MediaWise at The Poynter Institute, said this “gray area” that comes with new technology is something to be concerned about. 

“In the world of journalism and transparency for readers, there really should be no gray areas. It should be very, very clear how the news gathering process works,” he said. “Let’s get a handle on the ethics of AI in the newsroom before we go wild with it.”

This isn’t the first time “Dumb Ways to Die” has gone re-viral in the years since its inception, but this is shaping up to be its biggest viral moment yet. After a TikTok user created a video template using the campaign’s titular song in late January, online searches for the phrase “Dumb Ways to Die” increased tenfold, according to Google Trends. Influencers and celebrities such as Coco Gauff and Olivia Dunn quickly jumped on board the trend.

To learn how PlaySide is taking advantage of this unexpected viral moment, Digiday contacted the company’s general manager, Danny Armstrong, for an annotated Q&A.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

On the role of nostalgia in marketing mobile games

Armstrong: “There’s just something about this title, and especially what I classify as evergreen titles, where it’s been a game that’s been around for a long time now, like 10 years or so. And it’s kind of fostered this audience from kids who are now in the TikTok generation, and it’s mostly a nostalgia element to them. The amount of organic downloads that we saw, just from the YouTube video itself, was just insane. You can see people commenting, ‘Oh, my childhood — I love this game.’”

Digiday: At this point, smartphones have been around for nearly 20 years, so it’s not surprising that members of Gen Z and younger are beginning to feel nostalgic for the mobile games of their youths. Nostalgia is a key driver of successful creative work in the mobile gaming industry, according to AppLovin’s Creative Trends Report 2023 — so marketers might be wise to expand their definition of nostalgia to include games and trends that only feel old to people who aren’t, well, old.

On the impact of the ‘Dumb Ways’ viral moment on mobile app installs

Armstrong: “We’ve seen a significant increase in downloads. Of course, we’re number one in the U.S. in games, and we’ve been there since Friday last week — which is insane. I was actually looking back at ‘Subway Surfer,’ since it had a similar trend a year or so ago. And it’s still there. It’s been there for so long.

To get to number one on the charts, you need a significant amount of installs. Not only that, obviously, across TikTok, tens of thousands of videos and hundreds of millions of views are all going to come together to obviously increase the uninstalls. And when one goes up, the other goes up, so “Dumb Ways 2” is No. 35 on the U.S. charts, and some of the less popular games are also trending as well.”

Digiday: Armstrong declined to share specific install numbers with Digiday, but it’s hard to deny the effect of the “Dumb Ways to Die” viral moment in propelling a 10-year-old mobile game to the top of the leaderboards. Armstrong described the phenomenon as a “portfolio effect,” anticipating that the popularity of “Dumb Ways” would help boost installs for PlaySide’s future offerings as well. He also said that the explosion of popularity led to an increase in “Dumb Ways to Die” merchandise sales, though he declined to share a specific figure to show this growth.

On the viral moment’s impact on PlaySide’s current marketing strategy

Armstrong: “We just knew exactly what we needed to do. It was like, ‘Right, the trend is going big. We’ve got like 1.6 million followers on TikTok already. Let’s get on it and just keep pumping out content.’”

Digiday: PlaySide didn’t rest on its laurels once “Dumb Ways to Die” went re-viral — the company launched into action, posting a deluge of duets highlighting the most interesting and unusual examples of the trend. The TikToks, which feature the cartoon characters from the original “Dumb Ways” video, are sometimes violent and often uncomfortable to watch — but the rapid growth of the official “Dumb Ways” account demonstrates the strength of so-called “unhinged content” on TikTok. Since “Dumb Ways” went re-viral, its TikTok following has grown by over one million.

On the potential brand safety risks of the “Dumb Ways to Die” TikTok trend

Armstrong: “I’m going to take it a step back to say why it was initially made — it is a PSA. It was a PSA to use some form of shock factor to tell people to be safe, because it’s important to be safe, and we still stand by that point. It is still a PSA, it always has been, and it’s something that we want to keep making sure that we follow.”

Digiday: Many of the popular “Dumb Ways to Die” videos on TikTok are hilarious, and most of them are harmless — but at least some appear to show their subjects genuinely injuring themselves in the pursuit of viral fame. It’s not the first time a viral trend has come with potentially risky downsides; the “cinnamon challenge,” for example, landed many children in the hospital over the years. 

Armstrong’s answer to this question shows his awareness of the potential brand safety risks that come with a game being associated with violence or danger. These days, even wildly popular games such as “Call of Duty” have started to draw fire for their association with warfare and gun violence — so it makes sense that the creators “Dumb Ways to Die” would want to prioritize its origins as a public safety announcement, not a potentially dangerous TikTok trend. 

Gross spend on the platform was $7.8 billion last year while forecasted revenue during the coming quarter is “at least $363 million,” according to a company statement, a sign that the DSP expects to maintain the good times.  

During the company’s subsequent earnings call, The Trade Desk’s CEO Jeff Green cited published figures from Insider Intelligence hinting at a rebalancing of marketers’ budgets away from walled gardens, and towards “the open internet.”   

Speaking with equities analysts, he cited the report asserting that 2023 is set to be the first year that Meta and Google, a.k.a. “the duopoly” represented less than half of all (48.4%) digital advertising spend for the first time in almost a decade.

Additionally, Green also characterized CTV as “the kingpin of the open internet” and how this portion of the media landscape is “fragmented” to the point where it will play into the DSP’s strengths. 

In particular, The Trade Desk is betting that as streaming services such as Disney+ and NBCUnivesrsal’s Peacock become the primary means for audiences to consume premium content, and that advertisers’ spend will subsequently further drift from the duopolu. “​​CTV is perfectly fragmented but collectively huge,” he is quoted as saying, “It’s fragmented enough that no one has enough power to be draconian and go it alone.”

The markets clearly approved with The Trade Desk’s stock price leaping by more than 25% on the same day of its earnings disclosure with its market capitalization topping $30 billion. 

And while analysts were keen to laud The Trade Desk’s performance and execution, some hastened to add how there are some important caveats to consider, namely how walled gardens are here to stay, arguably proliferating.  

Size matters 

In his assessment, Madison and Wall’s Brian Wieser acknowledged that while The Trade Desk’s (comparative) objectivity means some marketers will favor the DSP’s offering to the walled gardens, the scale of Meta and Google remains attractive to media buyers. 

“If an individual service or technology provider can demonstrate high ROIs (however defined) in limited volumes, marketers who might only have the resources to spend with one or two media owners are unlikely to shift away from those walled gardens any time soon,” he added.

Further still, while Insider Intelligence data does indeed depict a loosening of Meta and Google’s stranglehold on advertisers’ budgets, recent headlines around these numbers were restricted to the U.S.   

“Insider Intelligence’s data is defined on a net basis, not a gross basis. For the numerator, market control or dominance should only be defined in gross terms,” he wrote. 

“On this basis, Meta and Google likely accounted for approximately 70% of the US digital advertising market … Adding Amazon, and the figure almost certainly would exceed 80%, and rather than declining concentration is increasing.” 

The rise of CTV = more walled gardens 

Meanwhile, the assertion that the increase in “CTV ad spend” contains some nuance, according to Wieser, with the former GroupM exec counseling investors to contemplate the definition of CTV.  

“First, I would not define CTV as including online video in a general form — instead I think most brands will only think of CTV as referring to premium content, and not include YouTube nor online video advertising that is not associated with premium video content,” he wrote.

And while some marketers may adopt a more conservative interpretation of CTV — amid “the waning reach potential of traditional ad-supported television” — most of the market is not there yet and unlikely to get there any time soon, according to Wieser. 

Meanwhile, even though legacy broadcasters such as Disney, NBCU, and Paramount have opened inventory access to third-party DSPs — The Trade Desk has partnerships with all of these players — some analysts believe the rise of CTV will lead to even more walled gardens. 

According to analysts at Arete Research, premium, household-name properties account for 70-to-80% of CTV consumption, all of which (such as Amazon Prime or Roku) have their own proprietary ad tech. 

Others are likely to emulate this trend, according to multiple Digiday sources with such a scenario lending weight to the theory that The Trade Desk would be an ideal candidate to purchase fellow ad tech company Criteo. 

The reason? Uniting two of the leading independent ad tech companies would buttress The Trade Desk’s pitch to Wall Street, which has (largely) rested on its CTV narrative for the past two years but has a notable downtick when it comes to retail media, according to some.   

‘Fren-zoned’? 

Meanwhile, it’s also important to consider how The Trade Desk negotiates its ever-evolving relationship with its core customer base (media agencies) with some speculating that the publicly traded DSP’s need for growth could lead to tension.  

Earlier this year, multiple sources from the ad industry’s largest holding groups told Digiday the DSP was approaching clients more directly with one source, who declined to be named, characterizing this as a direct threat.  

Although, it is worth pointing out that a spokesperson for The Trade Desk told Digiday that “relationships and alignment on the buy-side that we have with our agency clients have never been stronger.”