Month: January 2024

It’s only a few weeks into 2024 and it’s already shaping up to be one of the most dramatic. By the time this year is over, granular tracking might be as extinct as a dodo, the Western world could be scratching its head over transatlantic election fallout, and AI will be wreaking havoc like a bull in a China shop. The business world is in for a wild ride, and Danone’s global head of media and brand communications, Catherine Lautier, spills the beans on how they’re staying one step ahead of this whirlwind of change and chaos.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for brevity.

2024 is going to be a rollercoaster ride for a lot of advertisers. Is Danone strapped in and ready for all the twists and turns coming its way?

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It seems it’s not just big digital publishers like BuzzFeed and BDG looking to generative artificial intelligence tools as ways to streamline their sales process.

Podcast networks, like Acast, iHeartMedia and Spotify, are also testing these tools to increase their outreach to prospective clients, expand the range of shows that fit a buyer’s brief and translate shows into different languages.

For translation

iHeartMedia is testing a range of generative AI tools to translate some of its podcast show archive into different languages to reach listeners in international markets, said Conal Byrne, CEO of the iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group. iHeartMedia declined to share which AI companies they were using to test the translations. The technology will be used to transcribe, translate and then voice the translations. An iHeartMedia spokesperson said the company is working with podcast producers to test the quality of the translations in both AI-generated voices and the original hosts’ voices.

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Marketers are lining up at Google’s Privacy Sandbox like kids at a mandatory broccoli buffet.

Fail to act, and they risk losing their edge in competitiveness, compliance and effectiveness now that Google’s crackdown on third-party cookies in Chrome is underway. But diving into this sandbox means they’re in for a wild ride, with more questions than answers along the way. 

For many performance advertisers, this is an uncomfortable new reality. Brand advertisers, on the other hand, find themselves at a crossroads. The Sandbox doesn’t just limit their reach across websites; it also hampers their ability to prevent ad fatigue among those who visit.

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Digital media companies have to be willing to change with the times if they want to make 2024 a growth year.

For Gallery Media Group, publisher of PureWow and ONE37pm as well as over 70 social media-first brands like @Recipes and @Cocktails, this means testing out new social offerings like TikTok Shop, creating social campaigns for clients that will still work despite rapidly changing algorithms and modifying its experiential business to improve the ROI for sponsors. 

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Apparel and footwear supplier VF Corporation has announced that the personal data of about 35.5 million of its consumers was stolen by a hacker in a December cyberattack.

“A caaah is a caaah,” says actor Matthew MacFadyen, elongating the single syllable in his native British accent at the start of this dashing Mercedes-Benz commercial.

Patreon is pressing a federal judge to strike down one of the country’s few federal privacy laws — a 36-year-old statute that restricts businesses from disclosing video-viewing data.

The change comes in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Meta says. Instagram and Facebook users in the EU will can now use these apps with stand-alone accounts.

Lawmakers in New Hampshire passed a privacy bill that, if enacted, will give residents the right to reject online behavioral ad targeting.

Alphabet will adopt a new structure for its X division, an R&D subsidiary focused on inventing and launching “moonshot” technologies. The organizational structure will enable its projects to spin out
more easily.