Month: April 2023

“From the agencies that I’ve worked with, both multicultural and total market, Black Twitter was always seen as that barometer of what is happening in culture,” said Denitria N. Lewis, group director of social marketing and strategy at Dentsu Creative. “What marketers lose from that is access to real and authentic exploration of community and culture.”

For marketers and advertisers, Black Twitter is a cultural marketing powerhouse, producing viral phrases like “Bye, Felicia,” “hot girl summer,” “on fleek,” and even turning the Popeyes chicken sandwich into a viral sensation. Historical moments, too, have come from the platform, like #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName and #OscarsSoWhite. And often, it has been a go-to tool for advertisers to understand what’s cool to boost brand awareness and participate in cultural moments.

It has had poignant moments in history, too.

At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd murder protests when many were ordered to stay at home, it continued to be a place of conversation and community. At the time, tweets regarding the movement took off with more than 390 million tweets. At one point, there were more than 200 tweets per second about it. In response, Twitter launched a multi-city out-of-home campaign to support those voices as well as guidance as to how marketers and advertisers could listen and learn from Black voices on the platform.

“Black Twitter has become the blueprint for multicultural marketing and advertising,” said Denise Branch, an independent anti-racism educator and DEI consultant. “Agencies lacking Black marketing and advertising professionals have for so long taken credit for Black twitter without crediting Black twitter.”

And, sometimes, marketers realized that too late. Some of their strategies landed as co-opting, coming off as tone-deaf and lacking understanding of Black culture, executives said.

Case in point: Back in 2017, beauty brands Sephora and Taste Beauty released a lip gloss called “Bye Felicia.” The product sparked some backlash on Twitter as users questioned the relationship between a beauty product and “Bye, Felicia,” a phrase that stems from the movie “Friday“ where main character Ice Cube dismisses a woman named Felicia after she asked to borrow a car and a marijuana cigarette. (When asked, a representative for Sephora said the product and brand are not sold at Sephora US.)

But now marketers question what the fate of the captured non-white audience on Twitter will look like as changes to Twitter and Musk’s own Twitter tirades have left both advertisers and users — especially users of color — feeling uneasy.

“[Marginalized voices on Twitter have] been ruthlessly de-prioritized and deprioritized in a way that feels malicious,” a former Twitter employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Digiday. “I hope that we can learn from the lesson of what we lost.”

Even civil rights leaders, from organizations like Media Matters, Free Press, Accountable Tech and Color of Change, called on advertisers last fall to stop spending on the platform in response to increased hate and offensive speech and other changes since Musk’s takeover, per reports. (By December, ad spend fell on Twitter by over 70%, per Reuters — Musk blamed activist group pressure on advertisers.)

Should Black Twitter and other marginalized communities fly the coop, marketers and advertisers may lose the real-time, finger on the pulse, social listening capabilities that provided fodder for campaigns and brand slogans.

Because of this alienation and deprioritization, Black Twitter doesn’t have the star power or virality that it once did. And Twitter is slowly losing its grip as the go-to platform to reach multicultural audiences, three agency execs told Digiday.

Black Twitter’s buying power

Multicultural communities have long since been a line item in marketing strategies as advertisers work to reach those communities. It makes sense as Black buying power in the U.S. is estimated to grow to $1.98 trillion by 2025, according to Nielsen. On social media, Black people aged 18-34 are 2.3 times as likely to use social media to talk about brands, per Nielsen.

“Black Twitter was bigging up [or praising and recommending] brands before was a thing, before even brands were paying attention, if you will, so it was booming,” said Janis Middleton, executive director of inclusion strategy, who also leads agency cultural efforts at 22squared and Trade School ad agency. “Twitter acted as the catalyst that also bled into other ways that we were handling our multicultural marketing, knowing that inclusive language is a thing.” 

Before Musk’s tenure started, the so-called bird app was poised to officially launch a new creator program, Voices X, which connects diverse and influential voices on Twitter, like those of Black Twitter, with paid opportunities to collaborate and co-create with brands.

The program was under the purview of God-is Rivera, then Twitter’s global director of culture and community, who told Digiday at the time that she saw her role as building “trust with historically marginalized groups that utilize Twitter.”

Rivera is now at Disney, per her LinkedIn. Others execs who who were brought onto the team have also seemingly left, including Olubunkola “Bukky” Ojeifo, whose LinkedIn states her tenure ended in January, and Ariel Adkins, now managing director for Art for Change.

It’s unknown if there were certain business goals tied to the program. And since Musk took Twitter private, exact Twitter financials are no longer available. It’s also unclear if the team under Rievera has been completely dismantled.

In response to Digiday’s request for comment, Twitter sent a poop emoji in response.

What Musk has done

After Musk’s takeover, which has been associated with an uptick in hate speech, several high-profile Black Twitter users announced they were leaving the platform, including screenwriter, producer, and showrunner Shonda Rhimes, R&B star Toni Braxton and Whoopi Goldberg.

Earlier this month, Musk was supposed to strip legacy verified accounts of their blue checkmark badges, further pushing Twitter Blue subscriptions. Many balked at the idea of paying $8 to keep their verified checkmarks, including athlete superstar LeBron James, and rapper turned actor Ice-T.

“We’ve seen this shift to TikTok, we’ve seen a shift to Instagram. Now, that’s where the multicultural marketing trends are going to be found,” Middleton said. “[Twitter has] kind of fallen off a few plans, like media and social plans.” (Find out where Twitter’s ad dollars are going here.)

TikTok has become social media’s golden child, going from an experimental channel to a must have media buy for marketing strategies, creating virality for brands in a way that once was similar to Twitter. However, the platform has not been without its own diversity struggles. Post 2020 and the murder of George Floyd, society reckoned with social justice and platforms rolled out Black creators programs — a step forward, but not enough as far as Black creatives were concerned.

The biggest example was seen with the Renegade, a viral dance created by a then 14-year-old Black girl named Jalaiah Harmon in Atlanta, whose credit was delayed as brands and white creators co-opted it.

That’s not to say that Black Twitter has seen its final days (even if some hosted a digital homegoing celebration for the social media platform). The opportunity to tap into culture is still there. For example, in February, Beyoncé announced her Renaissance World Tour 2023, sending Twitter, and thus, Black Twitter, into a frenzy. Ally Financial took part in that cultural moment after a user tweeted about saving up for tickets via the financial institution.

But Twitter’s product changes, increased hate speech and reinstated banned accounts may make those cultural moments harder to come by if users continue to leave the app, pushing them and advertisers to alternatives like TikTok, agency executives said.

“There are still opportunities for folks to utilize these other digital platforms to help capture moments, capture trends,” said Laura Mignott, global chief experiential officer at VMLY&R Commerce. “That’s where the opportunity for evolution and different voices are really going to be impactful going forward.”

Still, to the former Twitter employee, the deprioritization of marginalized voices on Twitter speaks to a greater industry trend, in which dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion has stalled, replaced by flash in the pan creator programs and partnerships, they said.

“I want people to think about what the next era of this could look like. I’m holding myself accountable to that as well,” they said. “The commitment should still be there.”

— Julian Cannon contributed reporting.

Aside from showing up on social platforms with its new logo and look — Fubo TV rebranded to Fubo ahead of the World Baseball Classic last month — the streamer is also running its new ads featuring the brand’s new logo and look on linear TV along with digital displays. The brand wants to attract Gen Z fans, who are already accustomed to streaming platforms, as well as millennials and Gen Xers who want an alternative to cable to watch baseball without the hassle of paying for it.

“We’ve always felt that baseball is where we planted our flag and so demographically we’ve been able to bring in that audience that’s a little bit older to play, but still much younger,” said Yale Wang, Fubo’s svp of marketing, adding that Fubo to get the most awareness, it released ads on YouTube where it has over 45,000 subscribers.

Fubo also posts content in real-time on its social media channels during MLB games to try and distinguish itself as a brand voice focused on sports.

Fubo hired YouTube personality Jimmy “Jomboy” O’Brien (1.7 million subscribers), to talk about the new Fubo rebrand during his live stream on opening day. During the week leading up to opening day, he also shared Fubo’s match schedule pages into his Instagram feed. The financial agreement was not disclosed. 

“There is a huge audience for fans who watch sports through digital channels, especially throughout the pandemic, with growth predominantly driven by Gen Z and millennials,” Laura Connell, consumer trends manager at GWI.

According to GWI sports data on Gen Z, 56% of Americans and 40% of Canadians are either watching or following baseball. The market for sports streaming services is even more present with a hefty 68% of the overall audience watching sports events either on TV or online.

It is unclear how much of Fubo’s marketing budget was allocated to social media as Wang declined to share budget specifics. Sensory Tower data indicated Fubo has seen a decrease in its digital ad spend of 18% from last year, with the majority of ads being served through OTT and YouTube so far in 2023. In 2022, most ads were served on OTT and desktop video (no ads were served on YouTube).

“Dropping ‘TV’ was a good call by Fubo and when you’re trying to build brand recognition, simpler is almost always better,” said Brittany Hodak, marketing expert and co-founder of The Superfan Company, a fan-engagement agency.

Gen Z’s “everything all at once” media mindset suits with Fubo’s rebrand, said Steve Dunphy, executive creative director of Chase Design Group.

“America’s pastime is finally altering its once sacred rules in order to challenge the media dominance of the NFL and NBA by making their product more engaging for a younger, and less patient demographic,” said Dunphy.

Albeit, Magnite maintains that it’s business as usual and that DSPs are still its primary trading partners. ClearLine’s launch represents a necessary evolution of the ad tech sector that “significantly increases spend going towards working media,” according to the SSP’s press statement.

GroupM, Camelot, and MiQ have all been confirmed as launch partners with Magnite which maintains that ClearLine lets media buyers share data with publishers more securely — a key benefit as privacy laws increasingly prohibit the traditional means of programmatic trading — to find their desired audiences.

Sean Buckley, Magnite’s CRO, said the launch of ClearLine was a response to direct demand from media agencies for a more direct means of sourcing inventory “in certain scenarios” and that it offers participating publishers more flexibility.

In an email exchange with Digiday, Buckley had the below to add about the offering.

Some would say that ClearLine is made possible via Magnite’s purchase of SpringServe, can you explain more?

That’s correct. SpringServe, our video ad server, is the foundation for ClearLine. Publishers have used this technology for years to manage traditional direct sold demand, extend their audiences, and manage inventory sharing through carriage deals with other media owners. We found a high level of overlap between the capabilities modern media owners require and what buyers were looking for in these applications.

If this is about putting more dollars to working media, can you give an indication as to the average take-rate Magnite will charge via ClearLine?

The use cases for ClearLine to date typically share a high sensitivity in putting more dollars toward working media. There are also some benefits around better data enablement and sharing, particularly for activating sensitive 1st party data from the sell side.

If DSPs remain the primary method for agencies to access inventory via Magnite, can you explain to how ClearLine will operate in harmony with other sales channels?

This is a bespoke solution developed based on existing supply-side technology, in response to feature requests from certain partners. We expect it to be used by a subset of interested buyers, for specific use cases in premium video within the Magnite ecosystem. In the streaming world, it’s essential to have both the technological depth and flexibility to customize the workflow based on how the sellers and buyers want to transact. We absolutely expect our DSP partners to remain the primary method for agencies to access premium video inventory on our platform.

GroupM is one of our key launch partners. ClearLine provides access to the GroupM Premium Marketplace, which we power in the U.S. The GroupM Premium Marketplace operates across both biddable and fixed-price inventory, offering end-to-end transparency for participating advertisers.

Your press release claims ‘serving sellers remains Magnite’s primary mission.’ Can you comment on whether Magnite plans to introduce any kind of fee to publishers for accessing unique demand?  

We have no plans to change our current pricing structure with publishers. And yes, we’re in business first and foremost to serve publishers, to help them succeed. Everything we do is through that lens, including through an offering like ClearLine.

Some maintain such moves equate to ‘disintermediation 2.0’ – similar to how agencies and DSPs vied for access to marketers in the past. Are DSPs now ‘frenemies’?

We don’t see it that way. There are always going to be certain instances where companies have solutions to support various constituents in a dynamic market like ad tech. But DSPs are unequivocally among our most important partners and collaborators, and we expect them to remain the primary method for agencies to access inventory on our platforms.

Are there any concerns about the potential for some of the industry’s largest DSPs such as Google’s DV360, The Trade Desk, or Amazon will turn off the Magnite SSP due to growing competitiveness?

The entire industry is based on interconnectivity and cooperation. None of us survive without it. Our mission as an SSP is to help sellers, DSPs’ mission is to help buyers, and though sometimes we see things differently, the vast majority of the time we’re on the same page and we depend on one another to get the job done. That’s always been the spirit of the relationship we’ve had with our DSP partners, and while most major players in the space have solutions to serve both sellers and buyers to some degree, we believe that the spirit of collaboration will continue.

Not that there are any signs of upheaval in the team’s performance. When Digiday arrived in Germany in February to tour the organization’s offices, it had just won three major honors in two weeks, in three different titles. But this sort of success doesn’t always equal financial security for esports teams. Competing in the biggest franchised leagues usually requires massive up-front costs, which aren’t easily recouped. And teams across the industry are collapsing as a result.

Most of this chaos, however, probably won’t touch G2. Middling orgs are feeling the brunt of the correction. There’s more breathing room at the top where new fans, ad dollars and the best players are more within reach.

In fact, in stark contrast to the rest of the industry, G2 even turned a profit in 2021, according to a financial report released in German — posting a 1.37 million euro EBITDA. G2 is surely one of only a handful of teams organizations to do this, and has supposedly built on that momentum since then. 

“G2 has been profitable for the last two years,” Alban Dechelotte, who was promoted to replace Rodriguez as permanent G2 CEO in January after having joined the organization in 2021, told Digiday during an interview at G2’s new facility in eastern Berlin.

Dechelotte, who had stints at Riot Games, Havas and Coca-Cola before G2, said G2’s revenue is split among brand collaborations (60%), payment from game publishers (30%) and consumer products like team jerseys (10%). G2 also has deals with top brands like Red Bull, Mastercard and Adidas in just about every category, further shielding it from the cold. 

That revenue model has so far enabled G2 to hold up to the headwinds bearing down on it, and on esports at large. However, Dechelotte isn’t one to leave much to chance. Since becoming permanent CEO in January, he’s wasted no time molding G2 into something more democratic internally. 

“We try to take advantage of the diversity of leadership a bit more,” Dechelotte said. “It was very easy for us to rely on one person to make final calls on players and content, and sometimes product. But the first thing I did is empower people that are best qualified in the team to make a decision on their craft. … It’s not a one-man show.”

Nevertheless, the task ahead is an unenviable one for G2. However ignominious Rodriguez’s behavior is of late, his impact on esports can’t be denied. He made G2 what it is today: perhaps the most coveted esports org in the western world. For better or worse, Dechelotte is having to reconcile Rodriguez’s absence with G2’s standing as an org, as he plots a course forward for G2.

Notably, Rodriguez was still listed as managing director of G2 late last year, leading some to question whether he was still involved behind the scenes, despite the public resignation in September. Dechelotte assured Digiday that, despite a three-month-plus period between Rodriguez’s public resignation and his official one, he had no involvement in org decisions from the day he publicly resigned. He now has no special rights as G2’s founder, and is a minority shareholder.

“The level of interaction at the organization is minimum,” Dechelotte said.

The mission to course-correct the organization following the recent controversy starts, as it always has, with competition. G2 is still all-in on “Valorant” after being rejected a partnership slot in EMEA, which was almost certainly a result of the Rodriguez scandal. The org has signed a star-studded, North America-based roster, which is notable on two fronts: first, a successful season will mean G2 competes in the top tier of “Valorant” in 2024 and 2025, which will generate millions. Second, more activity in North America is indicative of G2’s global ambition.

“I would love [if] we are so global that it’s the norm for G2 to make jokes about EU fans and EU teams, as much as we do today for NA fans and NA teams,” Dechelotte said. “That will be, for me, a success, because it will prove that we managed to go beyond our origin and become a multi-local organization.”

But with such global ambition might come a loss of identity. 

“G2 is still a strong brand. My question about them now is, ‘What is different about them?’” said Mark “Cashflo” Flood, former North American director of operations at Astralis. “It seemed like Carlos [Rodriguez] was that differentiator. So now what really separates them? … What are the specific reasons that someone should be a G2 fan and why should someone support them over Faze, 100 Thieves, et cetera?” said Flood.

Long-term, G2 wants to rely less on competitive success for the business to thrive given the aforementioned risks, moving closer to a direct-to-consumer model. Last year it started to work toward that goal when it launched the official G2 app, which has gamified features for fans to engage with the brand, its content and its pro matches. It is also designed to ease the purchase of G2 merchandise. 

“The strategy for us is to diversify, but not the way people mean it,” Dechelotte said. “We want to be even less dependent on competitive performance. We are already quite unrelated to performance because we create some banger content that, we win or we lose, will be entertaining no matter what.”

As orgs go, few are as well-positioned to win as G2 — both on and off the server. While the last six months have been tumultuous, fresh blood in the CEO position, given what we now know about Rodriguez (and indeed about Dechelotte), might just be the best thing that could have happened for the business. 

On the flip side, some are concerned that the org’s challenges will prove increasingly onerous over time. 

“I’m not optimistic about the current esports team model at all right now,” said Jacob Wolf, founder and CEO of Overcome. “They own nothing other than a brand despite tech-level valuations. In the case of G2, though, I’m even more pessimistic. Carlos [Rodriguez] was the center of the brand and his public meltdown and ousting drove a lot of people away from being fans of the organization. So when you’re already on shaky ground, adding another layer of disruption makes it even more difficult.”

In this edition of our Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for candor, the programmatic sales lead talks about how their team is working to fix this issue, one deal at a time.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

Media buyers have said that having third-party verification is critical in most campaign deals, and if a publisher’s brand safety or suitability grade from a third party doesn’t pass muster or jive with what the publisher reports itself, they’re willing to move on to the next site. Do you think that there is an issue with media buyers cutting bait too quickly when working with news publishers versus trying to remedy the issue?

I don’t think [media buyers are] meant to be [putting] pressures on us by saying there’s inventory elsewhere. I think it’s more so how the buyers are trained today to execute these premium programmatic or direct campaigns. [This issue] is not just isolated to programmatic; it’s also a part of direct campaigns.

How does this come into play on the direct-sold side of the business?

If an RFP comes through, there will always be an indication of what is and what is not permitted, or what is expected [by the advertiser]. Where there are faults is the carryover from this buyer’s mentality in the open exchange and not recognizing that this premium partnership is not the same as the open exchange. So when you run on the open exchange, it is best practice to overlay pre-bid filters, keyword lists, block lists [and] even in your own creative, have creative blocking tags — there’s probably two more layers I’m forgetting — but these are all important because in the open exchange, if you don’t have a very curated approach to it, you can find yourself in the wild wild west of media buying. 

But what has happened when they go directly to a publisher is … they seem to not take into consideration a publisher’s perspective of what our inventory is [or what] we know of our audience. And in addition to that, we also partner on our side with verification companies to support your needs.

What has happened in the past, at least for me, is I will get a request for a news [private programmatic marketplace]. That news PMP won’t scale and as we go through the progressions of asking and troubleshooting, we identify that there’s the layer of a keyword list in place that is affecting the scale. But in some cases, they are blatantly blocking news as a category filter, which was one of the presets from the IAB. That old, legacy filter, it will prevent anything from your URL from scaling.   

Can you share an example? 

In Covid, everyone applied Covid as a keyword filter on their blocklists across the board, and even campaigns were shut down because buyers were like, ‘Our message is not right for what’s happening right now. But we’ll come back.’

What happened was they came back and you saw a lot of messages around community development [and] support for the community, but the technology on the backend was never updated, even for direct campaigns. So Covid was still being utilized as a keyword block list. And you continue to have this kind of spiral or snowball effect of the keywords compounding.

So it becomes a problem of having too many brand safety tools being layered on top of one another. But if a partner is coming to you directly wanting to advertise on a news site, why would they have a keyword block for “news” activated in the first place? That seems counterintuitive. 

It seems like a dumb question to ask when we are [insert publication’s name here]. [We end up] asking a client, ‘Are you targeting or blocking news or the news category?’ And they basically will say, ‘Yes, we are, that is our best practice.’

You create friction by challenging that and say, ‘Well, you don’t need to do that because we are a trusted news site, unbiased [and] we have a premium, highly engaged audience.’ But the resistance you’re met with is [still], ‘Well, this is our best practice.’

How are you trying to remedy this issue with advertisers? 

So you go through tactics of education and try to showcase to them that this is how we approach it, we can overlay on our side, we can take your keyword lists and review those and see if we can create something that’s similar. But in reality, there’s still this kind of shadow of the scare tactics [from the 2016 election] that are instilled in the minds of these buyers to prevent them from opening it up, even with premium partnerships or premium programmatic.

[The other issue is] that the tools that [buyers] have are not granular enough to support very specific activations within news publishing. The tools that the verification [firms] provide to the buyers are very blunt — the keyword lists, the site lists, the category blocks — these blunt tools aren’t sufficiently giving the buyer what they need to protect the brand, but also are the only thing that they have to rely on at the same time.

Are advertisers and buyers willing to bend their best practices to ultimately get on the same page? 

You start your approach by saying, we understand that we could be a pretty difficult environment to run on, but every ad dollar that you run on our [site] supports our newsroom, and we appreciate that. And that tends to set a tone of recognition that this is something that’s strategic for us. 

But from an agency level, you tend to really get suppressed and then stop. Now, if that happens, sometimes you just lose the business. I’ve lost business with big advertisers that say, ‘You are coming back with a very high score,’ whether it be IBT or brand safety or however that score and methodology is built up. So as a news company, inherently it is affecting us even more so than others. [We] lose the business and they just say, ‘No, we can’t run with you. We have to go elsewhere.’

How has this issue impacted your relationships with third-party verification companies or the ways in which you measure brand safety internally? 

As a news publisher, I might use DoubleVerify [and the media buyer’s agency might use IAS]. How can we make that sync up [or] give us what you tend to apply and we’ll try to do that on our side. Sometimes you’re met with, ‘No, we can’t do that.’

I’m looking at [the] verification company [I partner with] as, do I even need this? The buy-side is going to bring it anyways, so [should I] let them continue to do it rather than us having to pay for something that’s actually not being a tool for us to leverage? Is this becoming more of a cost center? In this economic downturn, money is important. Do I need this type of vendor relationship?

Reddit last week announced partnerships with Horizon Media, PMG and Wpromote, as well as the expansion of an existing partnership with performance specialist Tinuiti from a year ago. According to Reddit, Tinuiti tripled its clients’ ad spend on the platform over the last year. Among its clients are e.l.f. cosmetics, Unilever Health & Wellbeing Collective and Pacsun.

Specifically, the media agencies will have the option to take advantage of advertiser incentives, get early access to new ad product tests as well as enhanced measurement tools. They will also have better access to KarmaLab, Reddit’s in-house creative agency to help build campaigns for disruptor and challenger brands.

“We’re laser focused on both growing and diversifying our advertising base,” said Evan Wolf, Reddit’s head of mid-market and SMB sales, North America. “These independent agencies are cutting-edge: they’re nimble, they’re future-looking, they’re innovative and they work with some of the coolest and best brands in the world.” 

“The marriage of bespoke insights and continued ad experience enhancements can come together to bring to life a more full-funnel experience on the platform,” said Carly Carson, head of integrated media at PMG, who noted the agency is using its Alli marketing intelligence platform to deepen API integrations with Reddit.

“Today, I think the capabilities are almost to par with the rest of the platforms in our industry,” said Avi Ben-Zvi, vp of paid social with Tinuiti. “There are a couple of things that they’re still rolling out here and there, but it’s changed really fast.” Ben-Zvi noted in particular reserve buys with takeovers, compelling video units, carousels along with newer dynamic product ads. 

Reddit’s Wolf pointed to Tinuiti client e.l.f. cosmetics, which found that going past obvious channels on the platform such as r/beauty yielded better results. “They’re finding customers in places like r/girlgamers, which is actually very relevant when you unpack insights into how people use the platform,” he said. “Our ability to show and share those insights with advertisers is helping them find and grow their customer base. And that’s the type of work that doesn’t end when the campaign ends.”

“it’s now getting to the level where it’s comparable” with other social platforms given its longevity in the social space, added Ben-Zvi. “The question is now, can we scale that capability? And can we measure properly to prove out that impact as well?”

Darren D’Altorio, vp of paid social at Wpromote, said his agency is getting three levels of value from the partnership: education, performance validation and measurement, and creative insights from KarmaLab. The creative side is especially important since D’Altorio noted that Reddit’s communities are especially sensitive to advertising that doesn’t talk to them on their levels. 

“If you’re going to be on Reddit, you have to come to the table with a thoughtful approach,” said D’Altorio. “The Reddit community values comedy, sarcasm, certain aspects of self deprecation, brutal honesty. There are some really cool, creative gateways to have some fun with your brand on Reddit, which might be a departure from how you show up on other platforms.” 

According to Statista, Reddit grew ad revenue 39% percent to $424 million in 2022 over ‘21, with a similar sized bump expected for 2023. Reddit declined to comment on those revenue estimates, citing a quiet period prior to going public sometime later this year.

Might Reddit pick up some of the ad-sales steam being let out of Twitter, whose latest global ad revenue forecast got slashed by 27.9% from $4.14 billion in 2022 to $2.98 billion by the end of 2023? That’s what Insider Intelligence forecasts — the platform’s second consecutive downgrade following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022.

In Q3 2022, after the acquisition began in April, analysts downgraded the outlook for Twitter’s ad business by 30%. In the U.S., Insider Intelligence noted an ad revenue decline of 28.6% to $1.68 billion in 2023, compared to $2.36 billion in 2022. Twitter’s share of the U.S. digital ad market is expected to drop from 1% to 0.6%, according to the report.

Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst in social media at Insider Intelligence, said this latest downgrade comes in part because of declining trust from advertisers since Musk took over the company. Enberg added that ultimately Twitter’s changes to its subscription service, Blue, and other efforts to bring back major advertisers have not worked to boost ad revenue – and won’t not succeed so long as Musk is boss of the social platform.

“Twitter needs to unravel Musk’s personal brand from the company’s corporate image to regain advertiser trust and bring back ad dollars,” Enberg said.

Ben-Zvi noted that Reddit and Twitter are more alike than Reddit is to, say, TikTok or Instagram, so if the proverbial bloom is off the rose at Twitter, ostensibly Reddit could benefit. But he added that Tinuiti clients went from spending very little on Twitter to zero at this point, so there’s not been a huge migration from one to the other. 

Enberg agreed budgets aren’t shifting radically away from Twitter since it hasn’t historically been a huge social destination for advertisers. Additionally, she said that some ad dollars will be lost from the market this year due to businesses making cuts during a time of economic uncertainty.

“Many of the reallocated Twitter ad dollars will go to Meta, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, but it would be a stretch to call them beneficiaries,” she said.

Color by numbers

For now, it would seem short-form and video content is still experiencing the most engagement across social media usage for U.S. adults 18 and up in 2023, according to recent research from Insider Intelligence. TikTok is still winning the time spent competition by far. —AS

Based on the average time spent per day by U.S. adults, the top social media platforms are: 

—TikTok: 55.8 minutes

—YouTube: 47.5 minutes

—Twitter: 34.1 minutes

—Snap: 30.8 minutes

—Instagram: 30.6 minutes

—Facebook: 30.2 minutes

—Reddit: 23.6 minutes.

Takeoff & landing

• Independent media analyst Brian Wieser researched the top 25 independent agencies’ revenue flow (including The Brandtech Group, Dept, Plus Company, Horizon Media, Bounteous, VaynerMedia, PMG, Tinuiti and others), and found they’re growing more slowly after two years of explosive growth. Following an average 14% growth in 2022, which started higher and ended up lower, Q1 2023 growth was a much humbler 4%. Interestingly, Wieser noted that their slowing growth mirrors the slowed growth of the giant platforms — which makes sense since most of the independents lean heavily toward digital media.
• Auto giant Ford moved most of its AOR social media account, known as Ford Blue, out of VaynerMedia to a combination of WPP agencies (reported to be VMLY&R and Mindshare) and Wieden + Kennedy. Vayner, which had just won the business a year ago, will keep Ford’s commercial and government social duties. 
• Stagwell media agency Assembly promoted Valerie Davis from president to CEO of North America, citing a 21% increase in new business revenue over 2021.  Other promotions and hires globally include: APAC managing director Richard Brosgill was bumped up to APAC CEO, while MENA managing director Faisal Dean also got CEO stripes; Havas Media Group and Brainlabs veteran Matt Adams was hired to be CEO in Europe.

Direct quote

“Modern politicians are quite frankly, uninformed. They have demonstrated time and again in congressional hearings they have no clue how modern technology, apps, or social media function all the way down to its most basic level (“can TikTok control my wifi”). We have outdated minds making modern laws, and something is going to go wrong, which never benefits the brands. I think reform is a good thing, as long as it is done by people who can fully comprehend the reform they are putting forth.”

— Ian Clark, media director at independent Exverus Media, on the shape and direction of privacy laws.

Speed reading

• Digiday senior ad-tech reporter Ronan Shields looked into how the major SSPs are adjusting their games to stand out and increase their “stickiness” to agencies and brands. 
• Digiday platforms reporter Krystal Scanlon wrote about how the explosion of short-form video may actually hurt TikTok more than help it in the long run. 
• Will National CineMedia’s long-expected declaration of bankruptcy have a deleterious effect on cinema advertising? The experts I spoke to last week say if you know the business, no it won’t. Still, the news could help rivals make inroads.