Month: October 2023

Despite all of the brouhaha around the data privacy changes and challenges that came along with Apple’s crackdown on in-app tracking in 2021, direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisers seem, for the most part, to have reverted back to their bread and butter: Meta and Google.

Two years ago, Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework (ATT) presented an attribution problem, muddying advertisers’ insight as to whether their mobile ads were working. Meanwhile, Google’s promise to retire third-party cookies within Google Chrome spans the horizon for 2024. (More on Google’s latest cookie-killing plan and challenges here.) While the changes kicked up a lot of dust and discussions around the need to diversify media spend away from reliance on Meta and Google, the bulk of digital ad spend still lies within the digital giants for DTC brands hungry for customer acquisition.

“I’d argue that it’s probably a little bit overstated,” said Ben Witte, founder and CEO of Recess, a DTC drink brand. “In my opinion, the effects of iOS 14 and some of that stuff has been somewhat overstated and you still see the ability to run profitable digital marketing campaigns.” Per Witte, the company ramped up paid advertising on alternative channels like TikTok, but the majority of its digital ad spend lies within Meta, Google search and Amazon ads.

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The first two days of Digiday’s biannual Media Buying Summit, in Naples, Fla., touched on a host of issues and opportunities media agencies face this year.

While in-housing reared its head (in a surprising way — but more on that later this week), other conversations revolved around the need for improved measurement in newer areas like creators and influencers as well as retail media networks. A discussion on AI focused on what agencies should be considering when creating AI frameworks for brands.

During the first day, Coltrane Curtis, founder and managing partner of full-service consumer marketing agency Team Epiphany, talked about the measurement challenges that companies face in developing metrics on influencer and content creator campaigns. Many agencies have developed methods like brand lift or return on creator spend to measure the impact on influencer marketing.

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Hasbro is investing in college athletes — something the toy and game behemoth is able to do given the name, image and likeness (NIL) policy change in recent years — to gain traction among Gen Z sports fans. At the same time, the company is looking to garner interest among potential sponsors for the next edition of its new sporting event, Nerfball: Battle in the Bubble tournament.

Nerf wants to engage its audience with the brand’s product line, the Nerf Stryfe X, and take the opportunity to broaden its reach by creating a competitive sport that introduces fans to structured ways of playing with Nerf blasters and balls. Rather than partnering with big name influencers to accomplish this, Nerf sought out college athletes who would fit its competition, the first of which took place in Florida on Sept. 22.

“It was about launching a sport,” said Teresa Pearson, vp of global franchise strategy at Nerf. “Marketing was a component of that, but we wanted to make sure that this wasn’t [just] a marketing activation and that we were launching a real sport. We [wanted to make sure] we were putting the effort into it and we were spending the money needed and we were bringing in the right talent to showcase it.”

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This week’s Media Briefing takes a look at Pinterest’s new publisher program, which is among other social media companies, to compensate publishers for the content they produce on-platform.

• Pinterest’s publisher pursuit
• 3 Qs with Future’s CRO Zack Sullivan
• Bloomberg restructures for events, Campbell Brown leaves Meta and more

Pinterest’s publisher pursuit

Pinterest is pursuing publishers with more fervor via its new Red Standard Program, which launched in beta this June in the U.S.

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They want to engineer a Biden-Trump rematch by killing an alternative.

The Montanan who voted against Kevin McCarthy told donors he was ‘praying each evening for a small majority’ of House Republicans.

As the FTX founder’s trial got underway, the prosecution claimed Bankman-Fried deliberately stole customer money and used it for his own trading. The defense countered that he always acted in good faith.

Last week’s continuing resolution was a success for fiscal conservatives in both chambers.

“We appreciate X’s stated intent over the last few weeks to address antisemitism and hate on the platform,” the ADL wrote on X Wednesday afternoon, adding in its full statement that while “X, along
with other social media platforms, has a serious issue with antisemites and other extremists using these platforms to push their hateful ideas,” the organization acknowledges X’s recent actions.