Month: February 2025

Among podcast listeners under 30, 65% prefer to watch podcasts as a piece of video content, research finds. For many that means YouTube. What are the lessons for TV stations?

After a challenging few years for Starbucks, there’s been another change at the top of its marketing department. The coffee chain has hired Verizon Value’s chief marketing officer (CMO), Cheryl Gresham, as its svp, North America marketing. Gresham announced the news on LinkedIn, saying she would now be responsible for finding “innovative ways for marketing…

There’s no need to pontificate about the power of relevant advertising in live moments; the numbers speak for themselves. New research from Magna, the media intelligence and investment unit within IPG Mediabrands, and Sightly, a real-time marketing intelligence and activation company, quantifies the impact of aligning brands with real-time trends during media campaigns. In the…

Swarms of termites–those never-sleeping, constantly-gnawing creepy crawlies–cause $5 billion in damage to American properties each year, per bug experts. And what the tiny pests leave behind is destruction, no doubt, but on closer look it’s also…beautiful? Orkin, in its latest category-defying work, launches a new campaign called “Chewed Art” that turns images of termite damage…

Breeze Liu has been a prominent advocate for victims. But even she struggled to scrub nonconsensual intimate images and videos of herself from the web.

Reformation recognizes the power of a viral moment. The sustainable, direct-to-consumer fashion brand is on the heels of another such moment after its Valentine’s Day campaign featuring comedian Pete Davidson as the brand’s “official boyfriend” made the proverbial internet rounds last week. But that doesn’t mean the brand is in the business of virality for the sake of virality.

Brands are finding it more difficult to find virality as the social landscape continues to fragment. What works on one platform could die on the vine on another. And it’s a trickier time for brands on social in general as the fate of TikTok continues to hang in the balance, and amid content moderation rollbacks and brand safety concerns.

Reformation’s Davidson campaign followed a different viral hit last spring after it hired activist Monica Lewinsky on its “You’ve Got the Power” campaign, which featured Lewinsky, encouraging voter registrations. It was an inflection point for the brand as a way to grow brand awareness among new audiences, said Lauren Cohan, chief creative officer at Reformation.

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

Amazon may not be the go-to for programmatic ad buys. But with each passing quarter, that assumption is looking shakier. 

Just look at its latest earnings: $17.3 billion in ad revenue, a 17% jump from the same period last year. Driving that growth is the Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP), which lets advertisers tap into its rich data to buy ads both within its walled garden and beyond. 

While that premise isn’t new — it’s been pitched as a full-scale programmatic solution for years. But a steady stream of updates, partnerships and strategic moves has made it more compelling than ever. 

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

As the release of “Grand Theft Auto VI” grows closer, brands’ interest in the game is increasing, even if the specifics of its marketing opportunities remain unclear.

In recent years, video games such as “Roblox” and “Fortnite” have evolved into creator platforms — and, accordingly, have welcomed brands and advertisers to play inside them. “Grand Theft Auto” has remained intentionally devoid of real-life brands since its release in 1997. But Digiday recently reported that “GTA” developer Rockstar Games is pursuing a user-generated content approach for the upcoming release of “GTA 6” later this year, which has renewed marketers’ interest in the series.

With “GTA 6” on the horizon, brands’ inquiries about the game have steadily increased, according to five agency executives who spoke to Digiday for this article. (Rockstar Games representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)

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

Publicis on Tuesday said it plans to acquire Brazil-based influencer marketing company BR Media Group, and its network of some 500,000 creators.

With another holding company acquiring an influencer marketing shop, it seems the creator mergers and acquisitions market is still hot. WPP bought influencer agencies Village Marketing in 2022 and Goat in 2023; Stagwell purchased Leaders last year and rolled the agency into Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s tech suite.

Pending regulatory approval, the Publicis deal is expected to close in late March 2025. While financial terms were not made available, this acquisition would build on a growing influencer division for Publicis, which also acquired influencer company Influential last year.

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

This week’s Media Briefing looks at a hot topic at this year’s annual podcast business summit On Air Fest: podcast subscriptions, and how to grow them as a complement (or alternative) to advertising revenue.

• Podcasters discuss testing different subscription offerings at the On Air Fest podcast business summit.
• Hearst CEO’s predictions for a challenging 2025, The New York Times approves usage of some internal AI tools, and more.

Testing different podcast subscription offerings

Podcasters are testing a variety of audio subscription offerings to grow recurring revenue as a complement (or alternative, in some cases) to advertising.

This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.