Month: November 2023

In Hollywood, taming rogue AI requires military hardware. In Washington, Joe Biden plans to stop AI from harming people by tapping the power of bureaucracy.

YouTube expanded a “test” that threatens to cut off users who don’t turn off their ad blocker. Developers of the tools are scrambling to respond.

The adage “If you ain’t first, you’re last” from the 2006 film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is really more of a NASCAR thing, but that hasn’t stopped Formula 1 sponsors from adopting it. The Formula 1 Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix debuts Nov. 16-18, and brands fortunate enough to jump aboard…

There are few major brands that are as closely connected to the winter holiday season as Coca-Cola has positioned itself through decades of marketing. The iconic figure of Santa Claus has been a central component of that strategy over the last 92 years. This year, the company’s holiday campaign has taken its affinity with the…

Long before generative AI took over the spotlight in media and marketing, numerous companies have used AI as a selling point when pitching content creators and advertisers. Now, a new startup is tapping into the potential of large language models to help YouTubers sell ads.

Agentio, co-founded earlier this year by Arthur Leopold and Jonathan Myers, aims to help creators sell more ads while also helping advertisers find, buy and measure inventory across the right content. Along with automating the bidding process for 30-second ad reads, the Brooklyn-based startup uses LLMs to analyze creator data and content as well as advertiser data like campaign briefs, brand voice, guidelines and historical performance data from previous creator partners.

The goal is to create a platform for content creators akin to what ad-tech pioneers like DoubleClick and The Trade Desk did for programmatic display ads. The method: creating a “standardizable, scalable ad unit” that’s easier to measure across various platforms, provides more transparency around performance and pricing, and eventually scales to other social networks.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

Ad spending on TikTok is poised for another substantial increase in the coming year, with an even more rapid influx of capital fueling the growth.

According to ad execs, those rises for next year are set to be as much as 25% more than they have been this year.

What you need to know

• Shray Joshi, founder and CEO of the Good Peeps, which has clients including protein snack brand Chomps, and Chinese chilli hot sauce Fly By Jing, said his team’s goal is to get marketers spending at least 20% to 25% of their budget on TikTok in 2024. The same goes for Power Digital, which works for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Uniqlo and Casper.
• Meanwhile Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential, expects most of his clients, which include Fortune 500 companies, to spend around 10% to 15% more on TikTok in 2024.
• TikTok is expected to take up 2.2% of total digital ad spend worldwide this year, rising to 2.6% in 2024 and 3% in 2025, according to forecasted data from Insider Intelligence.

Behind the numbers 

While these gains are notable, there are some important things to keep in mind. One big one is that the money advertisers are pouring into TikTok is just a drop in the ocean compared to what they’re spending on tech giants like Meta. When it comes to TikTok, the cash is mainly split into two areas, as Tucker Matheson, managing partner of Markacy, pointed out: there’s the investment in creating TikTok content, and then there’s the effort to make ads more efficient or meet specific goals. Marketers are used to working like this, and until they do their advertising on TikTok will always be capped. 

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

During a time in which esports organizations are increasingly siloing themselves within either the competitive or casual side of gaming, NRG has found it pays off to have a hand in both.

The last few months have been the esports organization’s busiest ever, from a sponsorship perspective. On Sept. 25, NRG announced a partnership with Carvana rooted in the game “Rocket League.” On Oct. 10, it kicked off a partnership with Ford centered around the NRG-owned YouTube channel Full Squad Gaming. And on Oct. 12, NRG signed a jersey logo partnership with Kia America.

NRG’s recent run of partnerships demonstrates how the organization’s investments in both the casual and competitive aspects of the gaming community have succeeded in attracting brands’ attention — and their all-important marketing dollars.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

Social media management requires navigating the constantly vigilant eyes of the digital world. The task often involves monitoring brand mentions, comments and discussions across various social media platforms, as well as handling crises if bad press surfaces. Due to social media’s fast and widespread impact, social media managers are crucial to determining a brand’s response to adverse situations, protecting its reputation and maintaining transparent communication with its audience.

However, rather than crafting authentic statements to address its audience, some organizations take an alternative approach to deal with critics, with some going as far as creating fake or “burner” accounts to respond to criticism.

In this latest installment of Digiday’s Confessions series, in which we exchange anonymity for candor, a social media supervisor details what using burner accounts for a brand is like and why he wouldn’t do it again.

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.