Month: December 2024

In the first installment of Digiday’s 2024 Subscription Index, we established that this year has been a volatile one for publishers of all types, thanks to everything from layoffs to Google’s change of heart in its plans for the future of third-party cookies.

Against this backdrop, the 2024 Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies across several different digital touch points to identify some common approaches and key tactics. This third installment of the research series looks at an editorially-selected group of the top lifestyle-focused publications in the U.S.

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This year’s presidential election could provide a reality check — or a red herring — for marketers.

Young men overwhelmingly backed president-elect Donald Trump earlier this month, and young men were twice as likely as young women to vote for the rightwing Reform party in the U.K.’s July general election. In response, some marketers might consider changing the way they engage with these politically energized, young male consumers.

That could mean embracing the “manosphere” podcast creators credited, in part, with delivering younger male voters to Trump — or incorporating messaging that references “conservative” values into their ad creative. But depicting all young men as broad-shouldered stoics or Hulkamaniacs could be a wrong turn, according to research published by Kantar in November, after the election. 

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This time of year, it used to be a regular occurrence for ad buyers to be tasked with spending the year’s leftover ad dollars as marketers feared that if they didn’t use it now they’d lose it next year. That led to some “irrational budget dumping” in the past. But across the last two, as marketers have moved to more quarter-by-quarter planning cycles and zeroed in on performance marketing, the practice is a lot less commonplace. 

When it does happen, the requests are typically coming from major marketers whose ad spend is likely north of $300 million-$400 million annually, according to one media buyer who requested anonymity. The rule of thumb is that the bigger the marketing spend the more likely it is the end-of-year burn off will occur. 

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The long-running feud between hip-hop heavyweights Kendrick Lamar and Drake took a sharp turn recently when Drake threatened legal action against his record label, accusing it of allegedly bankrolling influencers and bots to push a diss track against him. The twist — and the frenzy it sparked — captured the pulse of modern fandom: intense, hyper-digital and caught in a chaotic crossfire of art, commerce and reality.

Read on for the full breakdown:

The dark side of influencer marketing

Drake’s legal battle reveals a growing tension in the music industry around the murky influence of paid endorsements on an artist’s success. With influencers wielding immense power to shape a song’s trajectory, their opinions have become crucial to a track’s performance. While this machinery has driven billions of dollars for the industry and kept major acts top of the charts, it spotlights a troubling reality: success can be brought often at the expense of organic artistry. Drake’s legal action may have its roots in the tet-a-test with Lamar, but it’s really a challenge to a system that has shaped the music business for decades. 

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Yahoo News, like many news outlets, had expected this year’s U.S. presidential election to drag on a bit longer than it did. “You have people planning to stay in the office for several days after the fact,” Kat Downs Mulder, gm and svp at Yahoo News, said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

Fortunately, news outlets are accustomed to adapting. And with Donald Trump set to retake the Oval Office, they are having to understand how they may need to adapt to either a similar Trump bump to the traffic increases news sites saw during his first term or a potential drop-off in news interest.

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Bypassing 90 years of heritage and unashamedly looking unlike anything else on the road, the brand’s radical relaunch EV could be as polarizing as the ad campaign that preceded it.

Teen sings Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Our House” to her dad, who puts in his Air Pods to hear the song clearly.

Toi Thornton has signed off from NBC Connecticut. Thornton was the weekend morning anchor at the NBC owned Hartford station. “LIFE UPDATE: This week is my final week at NBC Connecticut. Thank you to all of the people of Connecticut for allowing me into your homes every Saturday and Sunday morning! And to tell you…

To ensure its own global data traffic and expand connection capacity to more regions, Meta plans to build a fiber-optic subsea cable approximately 24,850 miles long – while avoiding tumultuous
geopolitical climates.

In a defeat for Google, a federal judge has refused to authorize an immediate appeal of his decision requiring the company to face claims that it collected personal data from smartphone users under
the age of 13.