Month: June 2024

On June 2, the long-running gaming convention DreamHack held its largest-ever North American event in Dallas, Texas. With 50,000 attendees crossing the threshold during the three-day festival, the success of the event showed that live attendance is still on the rise in gaming and esports.

The record attendance of DreamHack Dallas 2024 was reflected in an expansion of the event’s sponsorship business this year. Advertisers such as Porsche, Logitech and Intel were heavily featured on the show floor and alongside the festival’s packed schedule of esports tournaments.

Throughout the weekend, brands’ booths and activations drew ample foot traffic, with many attendees treating them no differently than the rest of DreamHack’s non-sponsored content. (Editor’s Note: DreamHack owner ESL/FACEIT Group paid for this reporter’s travel and lodging at DreamHack Dallas.)

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Thanks to Blockboard for sponsoring Digiday’s Cannes coverage and presenting this Digiday+ Research, normally available exclusively to paying subscribers.

It’s that time of year again for members of the advertising industry to head to France for Riviera views and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. And, according to a recent Digiday+ Research survey of agency, brand, retailer, publisher and technology professionals, more industry members will be heading to the event this year, with meetings and dealmaking in mind.

Digiday’s survey found that, this year, 40% of ad industry members have plans to attend Cannes in the South of France this year. This is a significant jump from last year, when not even one-quarter of agency, brand, retailer, publisher and tech pros (22%) said they were planning on attending the event.

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This spring, Gannett, NPR and The New York Times released the latest versions of annual reports sharing the diversity of their workforces, joining companies like Condé Nast, Hearst and Vox, which released their reports in the last six months.

The reports show mixed results in companies’ efforts to diversify their newsrooms. Digiday has tracked these efforts since companies began publicly releasing data on their demographics following a media reckoning that was ignited by the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Condé Nast and NPR improved the diversity of their staff by a few percentage points in 2023, as did Gannett (which published data on their workforce as of Jan. 1, 2024). But white people made up the same share of the employee base at Hearst and The New York Times in 2023, compared to 2022. Meanwhile at Vox Media, the percentage of white employees increased year over year.

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Mini holding company CourtAvenue is once again pushing aggressively into the AI space, launching two new offerings with the goal of creating a new category of client: AI AOR.

Just four months after launching its first AI-centric product, Genjo (short for generative journey), CourtAvenue is quietly rolling out Catapult, a generative AI copy generation tool, and Uplift, which enables AI-powered content development, Digiday has learned.

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With New York City full of chatter about AI during last week’s “Tech Week 2024,” marketers, technologists and legal experts gathered to discuss the high-stakes terrain of AI integration — and how to balance the promise of creativity and efficiency paired with plenty of pressing challenges.

At one half-day event hosted by organization AI Trailblazers, marketers from major brands took the stage to talk about their own AI strategies. And while AI’s long-term impact on advertising is still unclear, some are increasingly bullish on potential change. 

At Mondelez, maturation of AI could impact between 10% and 20% of non-working media spend — adding up to between $30 million and $40 million — according to Jonathan Halvorson, global svp of consumer experiences at the confectionary giant. The money saved will be reinvested to build proprietary infrastructure, train AI models and keep data current, said Halvorson, who added the company has invested $100 million in AI.

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Researchers are drawing on ideas from game theory to improve large language models and make them more correct, efficient, and consistent.

From the Digital Services Act to the AI Act, in five years Europe has created a lot of rules for the digital world. Implementing them, however, isn’t always easy.

What’s changed at Cannes: “much less endorsement and celebration of the worst excesses of our industry: the extravagance, the yachts, the drunken partying.”