Month: August 2023

Marketers say they’re concerned about made-for-advertising (MFA) sites, but the industry lacks a clear consensus on what an MFA actually is.

Consider this response when Digiday asked one media buyer for their stance on including MFAs in clients’ programmatic campaigns: “My mind immediately goes to clickbait. Am I using that in the right context?”

Normally, advertisers and publishers would look to a standardized definition or guidelines provided by industry trade organizations like the Association for National Advertisers (ANA) or the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). While the ANA is developing guidelines to release in October, the IAB hasn’t formally touched the issue. When asked if the IAB is working on a definition, a spokesperson said, “I believe the 4As and/or the ANA are working on a definition.”

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X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) is hoping to attract more content creators via ad revenue payouts to users who are subscribed to X Blue. By appealing to content creators with potential compensation, marketers, agency execs and content creators believe it could boost X Blue subscribers as well as retool the way that creators view the app.

Some creators have reported earning payments from X that range from hundreds of dollars to thousands after X began paying creators on August 7. To qualify for payouts, users must be verified and have at least 500 followers. Three million impressions in the last three months will qualify creators to receive a share of ad revenue. X stated that creators can withdraw as little as $10 instead of $50 (as it was before Musk started).

Alvin (who declined to share his last name, citing privacy reasons) goes by @sondesix online and is a tech reviewer and influencer with 101,000 followers on the platform. He had around 160 million impressions, he said, from Feb. 1 to July 31. In that time frame, he received a payment of $657.

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As TikTok continues to mature, marketers are seeking more expertise to master the platform. 

Last week, for example, drinkware brand Stanley announced that it had tapped Austin-based GSD&M as its first TikTok agency of record. While the formal agency-of-record relationship focused on TikTok specifically may be a rarity, agency execs say that marketers have been seeking more and more expertise when it comes to the platform. There’s more recognition from marketers and brand execs that when it comes to TikTok, the speed and agility needed to create content, capitalize on trends and manage the logistics needs a streamlined approach with a lead agency. 

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For all the attention being paid to X (née Twitter) these days, Ariel Sims is keeping a closer eye on Meta’s Threads at the moment. Between the two text-based social platforms, the latter is the one that the svp and head of paid social at Digitas North America said she’s spending more time talking with clients about and thinking about.

“We’re having more conversation around [Threads]. But because my remit is typically in paid [advertising and] there’s no paid advertising on Threads, it’s more of a POV around what are you seeing, what’s the usage looking like, how do we play in that space,” Sims said on the latest Digiday Podcast episode.

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Publishing executives used their companies’ latest earnings calls to continue discussing the opportunities and challenges around generative AI technology and its impact on media businesses.

While News Corp CEO Robert Thomson expressed concerns of generative AI “fatally undermining journalism and damaging our societies” during his company’s earnings call on August 10, chief executives from BuzzFeed Inc. and IAC outlined the business and content opportunities from using generative AI tools. 

The chief concern for Thomson and IAC’s leadership, however, is tech companies using their content without permission or compensation to train their large language models (LLMs), and said they are in negotiations with those companies to seek payment. But in a similar fashion to earnings calls in Q4 2022 and Q1 2023 when executives discussed the rise of generative AI, there remains a lack of specific examples of how this technology is contributing to publishers’ revenue and profits. 

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Thousands of security experts, hackers, and college students competed to trick powerful text-generation systems into revealing their dark sides at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas.

The White House is rewriting the rules for cost-benefit analysis to unleash its regulators.

As Iran balks, Israel and Saudi Arabia are now seen as crucial to U.S. global strategy.

Last month at Adweek’s Commerce Week event, we caught up with marketing and retail leaders to discuss navigating the future of commerce, top trends they expect to see this holiday season, and the consumer demographics brands should be advertising to. For more insights on reimagining customer journeys, watch the video below. Editor: Malinda DiPasquale This…

You’re not imagining the influx of brand advertisements when buying groceries online at Target.com or seeing sponsored options in the search results when surfing Amazon Prime for a new bathing suit. Those are retail media networks (RMNs) at work. New RMNs are popping up left and right every day. As of 2022, National Retail Federation…