Month: April 2023

WWE’s biggest show of the year, WrestleMania, which took place earlier this month had digital ads and product placements from brands including General Mills, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and Intuit. The financial agreements were not made available. They serve as proof of concept to advertisers, now that the advertiser pool has potentially widened with WWE’s acquisition by Endeavor for $21 billion dollars. WWE joins Endeavor’s portfolio of brands, including UFC and IMG Endeavor did not respond to a request for comment.

Endeavor’s acquisition of UFC helped broker “very lucrative deals,” including with Modelo beer and blockchain firm Vechain, said Jason Solomon, host of the award-winning podcast Solomonster Sounds Off, recapping the professional wrestling landscape since 2007. With WWE, he added, “the marketing possibilities are endless.”

The acquisition could also lead to UFC and WWE partnering to grow their audiences in viewership and among merchandising, said Audie Attar, Founder and CEO at the sports management platform, Paradigm Sports.

To interest the WWE fan base at Wrestlemania before the acquisition, General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch brand debuted masked versions of its cereal characters as masked wrestlers in ads that appeared during the Rey Mysterio vs. Dominik Mysterio match in the arena on digital screens, banners, and the ring’s apron digital displays.

The collaboration was a year in the making, said Dayna Needham, associate brand experience manager at General Mills.

“WrestleMania is a great place for brands to activate,” said Needham. “It’s not only a huge moment in culture, but it allowed us to engage with a new fiercely loyal and highly devoted fan base and WrestleMania allowed us to surprise fans in an entertaining way.” Needham did not provide figures that could speak to the success of this campaign.

Sports drink brand Prime, Mountain Dew, and Snickers also advertised around WrestleMania and declined Digiday’s request for comment.

Endeavor with WWE blurs the lines between modern sports leagues and associations, said David Novak, senior partner and co-head of marketing and sales at Prophet, a growth strategy consulting firm. And combining theatrical, staged sports products with regulated, sanctioned sports could raise brand safety questions.

“There is little doubt that the content is quite synergistic and that the streaming content opportunities are very interesting across these two properties and the ad sponsors each brand already attracts are in similar categories of beverage, alcohol, and sport nutrition,” said Novak.

This second report, dubbed Inflation Nation, still revolves around three main categories of consumers: The resilient (those who are spending much the same as before inflation kicked in); the Anxious (those curbing their spending so as not to dig too much of a financial hole; and the Vulnerable (those barely scraping by paycheck to paycheck). 

The goal of the report is to guide brands on how to market more effectively and thoughtfully given the sensitivities of the three cohorts. 

Though one would expect the Vulnerable and the Anxious to yield the need for most adaptability among marketers, interestingly it’s the Resilient whose habits have changed the most since year one, said Gurevich.

“This year, the biggest kind of surprise to us was actually they are not as resilient as they were last year,” she said. “They’re dipping into their savings a little bit, and are starting to adjust their spending — not as much as the others. But we’re starting to see a shift in their purchase decisions.”

That said, only 43% of the Resilient are only “somewhat concerned” about inflation and care most about brands stepping in to resolve societal issues.

As for the Anxious, who the report cites as highly price sensitive, 59% are cutting costs by spending less on things they like to do (up from 55% in 2022) in part to preserve what they see as their dwindling nest egg. They are still spending, just not as much. 

Perhaps the most disturbing realization the study uncovered is among the Vulnerable, who are closer than ever to exhausting their resources and savings and are borrowing just to secure essentials for living.

“Some people are also spending through ‘buy now pay later,’ particularly among the vulnerable,” added Gurevich. “Especially when it came, unfortunately, to household essentials and groceries. And that’s really where you start to see they are really struggling.”

So what are brands to do? The report suggests they be more transparent in their marketing about rising costs of their product or service — even though many of them don’t want to do that. 

“Not a lot of companies want to hear that they need to be transparent around why they might be shrinking their packaging to save money,” added Gurevich. “Not only are people noticing [shrinkflation — when companies reduce package size but charge the same or more for it] now they’re actually talking about it and sharing it on social. That’s actually where we saw the biggest peak in social conversation — it was these themes was around the ‘unfluencer’.” (Unfluencers being influencers who guide consumers on what NOT to buy.)

Where is the economy going — up or down? From Brian Wieser’s point of view, there’s not been much change either way — which could be a good or a bad thing. The independent analyst has been more positive about economic conditions through the lens of media spending for a while. And as of now, “there’s been no meaningful change” in his outlook.

Meanwhile, other publishers like Ingenio, Team Whistle, BuzzFeed and Gannett are experimenting with how generative AI technology can support their SEO strategies, including using it to optimize headlines and keywords for search and to find new topics to create content around to drive traffic.

It’s unclear how successful these tactics will be. Traffic hasn’t grown exponentially since Ingenio started experimenting at the end of 2021 with generative AI for SEO, though president of media Josh Jaffe said anecdotally at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado last week that traffic has “gone up.” 

Ingenio — which owns sites like Horoscope.com and Astrology.com — is “still waiting” for some of the dream interpretation pages it produced using AI around popular search queries to get combed, analyzed and included in Google’s search database, and for its celebrity birth charts, also created with AI, to rank higher on the search engine, he said, noting that it takes time for this to happen.

Team Whistle is using AI to generate metadata for its videos on social platforms like TikTok and YouTube and claimed more of these videos have gone viral, which evp of content Noah Weissman credits in part to the technology. One TikTok video that Team Whistle used AI to help with research, metadata and scripting has over 176,000 views. A YouTube video that also got the help of AI tools has over 425,000 views, and an Instagram post and video has over 59,000 likes.

In addition to using the technology on the back-end to create headlines, research keywords, generate meta tags and product descriptions, Ingenio has published more than 1,000 articles around popular search queries on Horoscope.com and Astrology.com using generative AI since the beginning of 2022. The publisher is also in the process of producing over 100 articles on the compatibility between each of the 12 signs on Horoscope.com, and thousands of articles on Astrology.com on different tarot card combinations, Jaffe said.

“There’s a cost that goes into creating a piece of content and there’s an expected return from each piece that’s created,” Jaffe said. “We could never really justify spending money on an artist or writer and an editor” to produce pages on “long tail” queries that aren’t searched as often per month as the most popular horoscope and astrology topics, he said. 

“But we can justify automating the process to a large extent by using these generative AI tools to create that content and start to fill in those gaps,” Jaffe added.

Team Whistle makes 30 to 50 TikTok videos a day, and AI can help determine the top keywords to include when publishing those TikToks to help get them surfaced by the platform’s algorithm, Weissman said.

Generative AI is also helping Team Whistle find the most-searched or best-performing topics on social media to create videos on those topics, Weissman said. The technology can also be used to generate meta tags from a TikTok video to use when uploading the video to YouTube, he said. Team Whistle is using an extension tool called Glasp to generate a summary of a YouTube video in seconds, which can then be optimized for SEO.

Other publishers are in the early stages of exploring how generative AI can improve their SEO rankings.

A task force at BridgeTower Media includes a head of SEO and web development, said David Saabye, svp of digital product management at the B2B media company. How generative AI can support SEO is “part of the evaluation of what the opportunity is,” he said.

BuzzFeed is experimenting with generative AI for SEO purposes, according to a spokesperson. And Gannett is in the early stages of testing AI technology for SEO for processes like keyword research and data analysis, but nothing has been implemented yet, said a spokesperson.  

Forbes is not using generative AI for SEO, but “it absolutely could be a tool that is used to help optimize for SEO in some ways down the road,” chief digital and information officer Vadim Supitskiy said in an email.

Digiday asked four recruiters and creator professionals to see how creators have gone about doing this.

What does the ideal creator team look like?

When it comes to a creator’s behind-the-scenes team, there are two elements to consider: the creative side, and the business.

Creative

Paddy Galloway, a creator in his own right, who has also worked with influencers including MrBeast and set up the YouTube creators’ jobs board YT Jobs last year, would always recommend an editor as a creator’s first hire.

“Having an editor could save them significant time so they can focus on higher leverage tasks,” he said. “In an ideal world, all the creator should be doing is recording and making final decisions on things. It usually does start with the editor as being the first step to getting to that place.”

Next is a creative director — someone who can connect the dots between the creator themselves, the editor, and whoever else might be within the team. “They’re almost like a go between that is responsible for building out the vision and ideas for videos,” Galloway added.

For those few creators, who are lucky enough to be earning six figures or more, Galloway recommends a freelance consultant who can act as a second set of eyes across all content and concepts to ensure all videos are top quality and in line with the creator’s vision and brand. 

“A head of thumbnail role is another great shout that ensures there are enough decent photos to use as thumbnails on the creator’s channel. Then as the business gets bigger, they can have various designers reporting to them,” Galloway added.

Business

While it’s important to prioritize production and video editing, creators often don’t have finance or legal support. Many creators started their channels or platforms as a hobby from a young age. So invoicing for brand deals and doing taxes is usually an afterthought, despite creators operating as freelancers.

“A lot of creators don’t understand they need to invoice to get paid and brands can be hesitant to pay them unless they’ve followed all the right steps.” said Darren Lachtman, co-founder of Goldenset Collective, a platform which supports digital creators by becoming equity partners in their businesses.

But Sherry Wong, a YouTube creator as well as founder and CEO of roster, a recruitment platform for the creator space, highlighted a new role that is emerging for creators: chief operating officer.

“Beyond a certain point of bootstrapping, creators find themselves in a position where they need help scaling,” she posted on LinkedIn. “After all, it’s not possible to do brand deals, events, licensing, people management and IP expansion opportunities on their own.”

So when should a creator start hiring?

While there’s no specific moment when a creator should expand their team, they commonly hire early. Galloway, for example, often meets with influencers who have less than 100,000 subscribers on their channels, but already have a full-time editor as part of their team.

A key moment usually comes after the creator has decided that creating content is no longer a side hustle, and they’re wanting to build a long-term business. It’s just a matter of whether they can afford to pay a team.

“Are they at a level where they can live within their means and lifestyle? If they can actually pay their bills and afford their cost of living, it’s time to move to the next level,” Galloway said. 

Before this happens, creators usually reach a breaking point in which they’re spending so much time with business issues that there is no time left to develop, plan for and shoot new content. Or they need to make a difficult business decision and they don’t really have the confidence to make the call on their own. They’re almost heading for burnout and forced to get support.

“If they deprioritize video creation then the whole business can implode,” said John McCarus, founder and president of executive search and advisory firm Content Ink. “Every creator faces this challenge at some stage.”

Are creators self-aware enough to make the call?

While some might be savvy enough to know when they need help, many creators started out with their home setups and no real business experience. And while that’s not a bad thing, it does mean they’re not necessarily able to see their work through a business lens.

Galloway believes creators are pretty bad at recognizing when to expand, after facing the same challenges as a creator himself.

“Quite often, people that end up being YouTubers for example, are not entrepreneurs,” he said. “The reality is lots of creators are people who are good at making videos. Sometimes they’re not the people who have read the business books and understand how business works or understand leverage and all these different things.”

Another challenge is usually about giving up control. When creators have relied on tight networks of friends and peers to build their teams, they’ve retained nearly all decision-making control. So the idea of giving up some of that power can be daunting.

“Smart creators will learn that they need to give up some control over the business to stay focused on creating,” said McCarus. “If they can’t get over this hurdle, they may implode or stall out. But if they hire the wrong person for the wrong reasons they may find themselves in an untenable situation.”

Finding the right candidates

Unlike other industries where job applications are a numbers game, once a creator reaches a certain level, it’s likely that they’ll have management teams like Night and Gleam Futures approach them, offering their services.

“Once a creator has reached about 100K followers, they’re on our radar and we [at Goldenset] will approach them,” said Lachtman. 

But the biggest challenge with this approach is knowing whether or not those offers are coming from genuine and trustworthy companies and individuals. In LA, for example, Lachtman explained there are a lot of people trying to make a quick buck, who don’t necessarily have creators’ best interests in mind.

“We always advise creators to be especially careful,” he said. “This industry is still so young, so there isn’t that esteemed history of knowing who is legit, and who’s been in the game for a while, and for the right reasons.”

Which is why creators often heavily rely on word of mouth recommendations from peers in their networks.

The other side of the coin is what talent is actually available.

From what Galloway has seen via his YT Jobs business, while there are tons of jobs posted, the caliber of those applying doesn’t necessarily match. And given how quickly platforms like YouTube accelerated during the pandemic, this changed the needs and expectations of creators in terms of how they hire, how big their teams are and how they approach business and their channel. It essentially means creators now prefer to hire people who have years of experience, especially if they’re aiming for a lean team. But there are very few people that are applying for the roles that have been working on YouTube for three or four years that have the experience of growing big, successful channels.

“The problem is there’s lots of people on the entry level side who just want to get a chance on YouTube,” Galloway said. “But YouTubers don’t want to take a chance on entry level talent because it requires a lot of training and complexity. Whereas if they hire someone with three to four years of experience, it’ll be a far easier setup.”

There’s also the cost factor. Similar to other freelance industries, roles in the creator economy don’t have benchmarks or guides about how to price the roles a creator, at any level, might need. For example, one remote, full-time video editor role advertised on YT Jobs is offering $24K per year, while another full time onsite video editor role lists the salary between $60K to $75K per year.

“On hiring, I’m likely to pay between $200 to $300 per thumbnail, and I’m probably going to be paying between $500 to $600 per edit,” said Galloway. “But I work with big people, and a lot of creators get talent a lot cheaper than I do.”

“We’ve made it to the promised land, but the promised land looks a bit like where we’ve just been in the sense that there’s huge fragmentation across the digital media landscape,” said Andrew LaFond, ‪vp and executive director of media and connections at R/GA. “We made it to the future [but] the future has its own challenges that we need to work through.”

Overall, the industry is increasingly shifting linear television dollars to digital ad budgets. In Q1 of 2022, 43% of brand professionals said they weren’t spending any of their marketing dollars on TV, according to Digiday+ Research. That figure increased slightly to 48% by Q3 2022 and then again to 49% in Q1 of this year. Meanwhile, 59% of the brand professionals who said they spend on TV advertising put a moderate portion of their budgets toward CTV, per the research.

For the first time ever, U.S. adults are expected to spend more time watching digital video, via Netflix, TikTok and YouTube than traditional television, according to Insider Intelligence. On average, people will watch 3 hours and 11 minutes of digital video this year in comparison to 2 hours and 55 minutes of traditional TV. While things like TikTok count as digital video, it’s not perceived or valued the same as streaming or what’s considered premium content featured on platforms like Hulu, Netflix or HBO Max.

However, where eyeballs are going, advertisers and their dollars are sure to follow, namely spending on CTV, which is expected to account for 7.3% of ad spend this year, up from 6.1% last year, per Insider Intelligence. In fact, Mondelēz-owned brand Chips Ahoy’s has shifted its ad spend almost entirely away from television to focus on social and digital ad channels to reach a younger audience. Those digital ad channels include TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and connected TV, per the company.

At R/GA, some clients have never advertised on linear, leveraging digital video ads as the entry into video advertising, according to LaFond. 

Much of that is thanks to digital video’s flexibility in both media buying and creative, an uptick in viewership, as well as improved measurement and targeting capabilities. The latter still has a ways to go in since it remains riddled with flaws, agency execs say — but that’s not a new problem. Even as marketers are shifting ad dollars to follow audience eyeballs — away from broadcast television to streaming — measurement, frequency and targeting issues that have long been part of the streaming space continue to linger.

“The measurement part is a challenge. Even trusting and knowing that your ads are going to show up where you want them to is a challenge, and that you’re not over-serving on one platform,” said Andy Rhode, head of media and social at Fallon ad agency. 

Video advertising in general has always been hard to measure, but the CTV landscape is saddled with curious reselling practices and fears of ad fraud. The collective measurement strategy, it seems, is “take our word for it,” relying on delivery on impressions rather than conversions or a lift in brand awareness to determine success, executives say. (Read more on CTV’s awkward path to success here.)

There’s also CTV’s hefty price tag. In some cases, an agency executive who spoke to Digiday anonymously said CPMs can range from $40 to $50 or up to $80, depending on the content that’s being advertised around. In other cases, premium CTV CPMs can range upwards of $30 in comparison to paid social ads, which hover in the single digits, according to Nitin Sinha, vp, head of paid media at Laundry Service ad agency. Even with talk of economic uncertainty looming, agency experts say CTV is worth it simply because the audience is there and the media buys are more flexible than linear. (Agency executives did not offer specifics on television CPMs.)

“We’re not seeing that the CPMs are so high that it’s becoming prohibitive, but it is high enough that we’re constantly reevaluating our investment levels in CTV,” he said.

A few years ago, advertisers set linear television media spend as their baseline, supplementing in digital video to deliver incremental reach, according to Sinha. That has since been flipped on its head, with advanced advertisers now prioritizing digital video, but supplementing with television for live events, like sports, award shows and other tentpole moments. (Agency executives declined to offer specific figures around television and streaming ad budgets.)

That said, there’s still value in linear TV advertising, which has suffered a decrease, rather than a decimation, in spend in light of digital video’s rise.

“If consumers are still spending that much time in that space, it’s clearly a really important channel for us to continue to invest in,” said Jamie Rubin, evp and executive director of media at 22squared. “It still plays a really important role in the mix for our clients and I don’t think we’ll see that go away anytime soon.”