Month: September 2024

With the closing ceremonies a memory and medals stowed in trophy cases or trotted out all over social media, the Paris Summer Olympics are finally done. But advertisers’ and broadcasters’ work continues.

Media companies such as NBCU and Channel 4, and marketers at major brands such as Nike, Bridgestone and Samsung, are crunching the numbers to figure out which channels were most useful and how many viewers engaged with the thousands of hours of broadcast sport.

Dan Lovinger, president, advertising sales, NBC Sports Group, told Digiday in an email that the Paris Olympics were “consumed in massive numbers,” with a daily average of 30.4 million viewers across its various channels. The company secured a 60% increase in sales resulting in $1.2 billion in ad revenue, its highest-ever tally for the Olympic Games and more than that brought in by the Tokyo and Rio games combined, he added.

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The world’s largest Web3 game has thrown its hat into the in-game advertising ring.

Since its initial release in 2021, the blockchain farm simulator game Pixels has accrued a larger user base than any other Web3 game, with over a million users logging in on a daily basis to socialize and farm their virtual land. 

In late July, the game launched its first intrinsic in-game advertising offering, with clickable ads located in natural in-game locations such as billboards and banners. So far, the experiment appears to be showing some promising results: one in-game billboard achieved a claimed conversion rate of over 20 percent, with over 50 of the 237 users who clicked within the ad’s first two weeks purchasing some of the crypto token advertised. 

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When it comes to programmatic advertising on demand-side platforms, there’s no denying that industry giants Google and The Trade Desk are the dominant players. But according to a Digiday+ Research survey of 70 agency, publisher, technology and other ad industry pros conducted in March of this year, there’s room for competition in the space, and industry members want that competition to come from Amazon.

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Cologne’s about to transform into a chaotic cocktail of code and Kölsch, where ad tech devotees descend for their annual pilgrimage. Brace for AI buzzwords, bratwurst bonding, and booth fatigue. With phones charged and livers steeled, attendees prepare to navigate this pixelated pandemonium. It can only mean one thing: DMEXCO is upon us.

The who’s who of ad tech are flocking to the conference — a place where hope springs eternal, no matter the industry’s woes. Last year, it was survival without third-party cookies in Chrome; the year before, advertising’s environmental footprint; before that, clawing back from the pandemic.

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This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how free, ad-supported streaming TV channels are filling less of their available ad slots this year.

• Freefall
• Snapchat combines Stories and Spotlight into new feed
• Olympics lift TV watch time in August — a little
• Spotify courts video creators, The Trade Desk secure CTV hardware partner, Netflix signs product placement deals and more

Freefall

Free, ad-supported streaming TV channels may be growing in viewership, but that growth is outstripping advertiser demand. 

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Looks like big advertisers aren’t slamming the door on X just yet, even if their relationship with its owner, Elon Musk, is more drama than deal-making. 

How else do you explain 80 marketers showing up at X’s New York HQ yesterday (Sept. 17) for another client council session? It’s essentially X’s version of an upfront — where advertisers come to kick the tires and decide if the platform is still worth their ad dollars, despite the drama that makes it a risky bet.

“I think there is an overall curiosity among advertisers in general, regardless of whether they’re spending or not, to see what X is doing and what developments are happening there,” said Jasmine Enberg, vp and principal analyst of social media and the creator economy at eMarketer. X declined to comment.

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As President Joe Biden’s administration takes aim at cheaper Chinese products — think about the continually growing popularity of sellers like Temu and Shein — by increasing tariffs on said products, ad buyers hope the eventual ripple effects will be cheaper CPMs on Meta platforms. 

Earlier this year, an ad blitz from Temu had ad buyers, particularly those who work for direct-to-consumer brands, abuzz. Throughout the first quarter of 2024, Temu spent $46 million on paid social ads with 98% of that spend dedicated to Facebook, according to data from MediaRadar. Buyers at the time said that Temu’s increased ad spending on Meta had allegedly disrupted the market and boosted CPMs.

Among the Biden administration’s proposed crackdown on Chinese goods is an end to a trade loophole known as the de minimis exemption which allows foreign countries to sell goods directly to consumers without paying tariffs as long as it’s under $800 worth of goods. Those kinds of shipments have increased dramatically in recent years hitting one billion last year, per a White House statement, as the popularity of sellers like Temu and Shein have surged in the U.S.

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WDTN anchor John Seibel has signed off of the Dayton, Ohio NBC affiliate after 10 years. Seibel choked up when saying his on-air farewell with his co-anchors. “I swore I wouldn’t cry. I shouldn’t have sworn,” he said on social media. “Thank you, Miami Valley!” Seibel started working at WDTN in 2014. He worked at…

If you try to figure out how OpenAI’s o1 models solve problems, you might get a nastygram.

David Muir didn’t just co-moderate a closely-watched presidential debate last week–he also anchored the country’s top newscast. According to live plus same day data from Nielsen, ABC World News Tonight posted a dominant performance during the week of Sept. 9, attracting an audience of 6.933 million total viewers and 967,000 viewers in the Adults 25-54…