Advertising Perspectives

The closer you get to a point of change, the more uncertainty there is.  Just ask mobile ad execs scrambling to make sense of Apple’s monumental privacy update.  It’s been a week since iOS ... read more

After a year of protests and calls for radical change in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a collective of Atlanta marketing and advertising professionals is calling on the industry to put its money where ... read more

The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how this year’s NewFronts presentations highlight the role of TV programming and distribution in advertisers’ streaming consideration sets. Streaming’s TV dividing lineHollywood’s return to workPay-TV providers’ ... read more

After connected TV platform owners and ad-supported streamers dominated the opening day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s four-day NewFronts, digital video platforms, publishers and programmers took the virtual stage on May 4. Shoppable video ... read more

Pet adoption has exploded during the pandemic. But now, new cat and dog parents are concerned about separating from their furry loved ones when they return to the office.  Last October, Rover reported that one-third ... read more

Hearst is anchoring its new educational franchise, Design U, to four of its luxury and design titles — Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Town & Country and Veranda — as a way to quadruple audiences and ... read more

Throughout the pandemic, some retail categories have been inherently successful. Home furnishings and décor are among them; with consumers spending so much more time at home, updates and renovations flourished.  Criteo data from the first ... read more

Twitter is slowly assembling a media ecosystem for media elites where very little media appears to be for sale.  Twitter today announced it had acquired Scroll, the long-gestating subscription service that offers an ad-free browsing ... read more

In recent years, Microsoft has been looking to diversify and grow its ads business beyond its B2B roots with acquisitions like PromoteIQ and LinkedIn. During the company’s third-quarter earnings call earlier this week, Microsoft reported ... read more

More people between the ages of 18 and 34 are watching streaming than linear TV. Streaming TV reaches an audience that is not tuning into linear TV, which is declining. Cord cutting is accelerating. That ... read more

The Try Guys brand was formed in 2014 by four BuzzFeed producers who wanted to be funny on their company’s YouTube channel. Within four years, the group — Ned Fulmer, Keith Habersburger, ... read more

After years inside a company whose CEO is not interested in media, Verizon Media has been gobbled up by a private equity giant that has grown quite interested in media. Its new owners, Apollo Global ... read more

Facebook is providing academic researchers with a massive data haul revealing how political ads during last year’s U.S. elections were targeted to people on the platform. However, researchers have been held up by an arduous ... read more

When it comes to marketing messages for summer 2021, brands are leaning into the missed experiences of the last year and a half. Think BBQs, birthday parties, family reunions, travel — the experiences and normalcy ... read more

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s NewFronts has yet to emerge as its own marketplace à la TV’s annual upfronts. But this year — with a larger swath of the TV and streaming video market presenting — ... read more

A broader sense of purpose from companies is welcome but must be measured, particularly when it comes to advertising. Doing so, however, requires new standards, according to the CEO of GroupM in North America Kirk ... read more

This article is part of the Future of Work briefing, a weekly email with stories, interviews, trends and links about how work, workplaces and workforces are changing. Sign up here. Black-owned media is not in a position ... read more

Concerned that the exploding world of ad tech and automated media buying, specifically the $82 billion programmatic space, just keeps getting more confusing and complex, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) issued an RFP to ... read more

If 2020 did one positive thing, it lessened the stigmas around mental illness and encouraged people to seek guidance on mental health. And that’s one trend that might continue: one out of every five Americans ... read more

Q.Digital, publisher of digital media brands like Queerty and Gay Cities, has relaunched Into, the publication launched by the gay dating app Grindr which shuttered it in January 2019. The new owner says Into will ... read more

Growing user concerns about privacy are prompting changes in how publishers and brands collect and share consumer data. The looming elimination of third-party cookies will have a major impact on the digital advertising landscape, forcing ... read more

Nancy Reyes didn’t grow up wanting to be in advertising. The daughter of immigrant parents, she hadn’t thought of it as a career path throughout her childhood — instead focused on day-to-day life and getting ... read more

To prepare for the coming third-party cookie changes, publishers have been busy stitching together all the information they have about their readers and looking for ways to gather more first-party data.  Gannett is no exception, ... read more

The Wall Street Journal is going on a subscriber acquisition spree in the two months before its fiscal year ends on June 30, having debuted a new brand marketing campaign this week, and next month ... read more

In July of 2020, eBay CEO Jamie Iannone acknowledged the company was due for some updates — a “tech-led reimagination” — as he called it. With so many online marketplace options, eBay knew it needed to ... read more

When it comes to esports, some advertisers see themselves more like a commissioner than a sponsor. Clothing retailer Hollister is joining a growing list of advertisers that include Budweiser Lite and Wendy’s that aren’t content ... read more

Online manipulation is emerging as a new front in the digital privacy battleground. Researchers say dark patterns — nuanced design elements intended to coerce people into taking certain actions — can be found in the physical ... read more

While talking shop a while back with a friend who is the editor-in-chief of an international news magazine, veteran marketer Anna Griffin and the journalist realized just how similar their occupations actually were — that ... read more

GroupM is consolidating more of its programmatic spending into fewer ad tech vendors on the back of better commercial terms. Clients like telecommunications firm BT say it’s reaping the benefits.  Namely among those benefits is ... read more

F’real, a California-based, blend-it-yourself milkshake and smoothie company, is doubling down on its virtual reality efforts by way of its new mobile app game “F’real Shake Run.” The initiative is designed to keep the 18-year-old ... read more

Ergonomics experts must be losing their minds. They are witnessing employees working off their beds, sitting in uncomfortable chairs and even on the floor; tapping away on laptops that were not designed to be used ... read more

This week’s Media Briefing looks at how, with a less volatile White House, news organizations are finding more opportunities to do deeper reporting on issues like social justice and immigration. A new era for newsNewsrooms ... read more

Last summer, 7-Eleven advertised on TV for the first time in five years. Doing so was a “test case” for the convenience store brand to assess the impact of television advertising on the business, according ... read more

The pandemic has been good to Shopify. The increase in online shopping, paired with small and mid-sized businesses swiftly moving to meet that online demand, resulted in $37 billion in GMV for the first quarter. ... read more

The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how creators have not only broken into Hollywood but are getting entertainment’s establishment to bend to them. Creators’ big breakThe advertiser view of Nielsen’s measurement messWTF ... read more

Some say Apple’s long-awaited privacy update paves the way for an extended run at ad dollars. What better time, then, to take a look back at where Apple’s ambitions for advertising started — iAd.  Launched ... read more

Like other social platforms, Pinterest benefited from millions of people being stuck at home for the last year, looking for design inspiration for how to turn a closet into an office, or make easy one-pot ... read more

Content aggregation platform Flipboard is moving its newsletter portfolio away from being supported by programmatic display ads to sell native newsletter sponsorships after the company made more money from its curated emails. “We realized we ... read more

A Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing held yesterday had the opportunity to be a reprieve. In contrast to previous congressional hearings that have been little more than opportunities for legislators to verbally pummel big tech ... read more

The digital customer, born on the internet and more recently shaped by the pandemic, is here to stay, and their numbers will only grow. There were 256 million digital buyers in the United States in ... read more

The 2021 Digiday Media Awards Europe honors the companies, technologies and campaigns that have modernized European media in the past year. This year’s finalists proved they could produce impactful, innovative and topical work and programs, ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Google Play | Spotify Sienna Mae Gomez is a definitive overnight sensation. In August, she posted a video to her secondary TikTok account that attracted hundreds of thousands of views within hours and led ... read more

Time is on a mission to legitimize publishers’ roles in the crypto revolution and is making sure its balance sheet is proof of that. Last week, Time started accepting Bitcoin (and 31 other types of ... read more

Marketers and media buyers will no longer deal in hypotheticals when it comes to the impact of Apple’s privacy changes. As the long-awaited iOS 14 update rolls out this week (it officially hit Monday), users ... read more

Publishers and events presenters went into 2021 expecting in-person business events to become a part of the media and marketing calendars again.  And while it looks like momentum for that won’t really begin building until ... read more

Everyone becomes what they hate sooner or later. Of course, they might not become everything they hate, but they become the thing that they focus on the most.  For Apple, that thing is a walled ... read more

As Digiday continues to expand its news team and media business, we’re excited to welcome Michael Bürgi to the Digiday staff as our senior editor, media buying and planning. Along with continuing to author our ... read more

Most people think of Amazon advertising revolving predominantly around search. But the e-commerce giant’s tentacles expand in many other directions. At the second meeting of Modern Retail’s Amazon U event, we drilled down on the ... read more

It’s finally here. After months of speculation and confusion, Apple’s much-anticipated privacy crackdown is coming into force. While — in theory — preparation for this moment has been going on behind the scenes for some ... read more

After a year of unprecedented disruption businesses are pressing forward with the next post-pandemic challenge: the future working model.  A total 77% of 5,500 leaders surveyed in a recent Deloitte report, said they plan to ... read more

Takeover ads are taking over the connected TV screen. Samsung will debut three new ad products to its smart TV platform that are designed to give viewers’ full attention to advertisers, the company plans to ... read more

After a year of uncertainty, some agency executives are in the market for assurances heading into this year’s annual upfront deal-making cycle. Executives at five separate agencies said they plan to push for deals that ... read more

Apple’s long-awaited crackdown is being enforced. Starting today (April 26), people will start receiving prompts on their Apple devices as to whether they want to be tracked by various apps. Now comes the hard part: ... read more

In any media company, newsrooms are inherently responsible for monitoring audience metrics and achieving growth, both to sustain their businesses and continue delivering what readers want.  At Insider, where each reporter must earn a specific ... read more

Privacy concerns, potential discriminatory categorization of people and data control have some publishers including The Guardian joining web browsers in blocking Google’s cookieless tracking and ad targeting method, FLoC. Meanwhile, The New York Times is among publishers ... read more

The storyline of marketers in-housing some or all of their media duties at the expense of media agencies, particularly those owned by holding companies, has been told many times over the last few years. But ... read more

Brands and agencies have embraced gaming as a means of tapping into a broad, diverse audience. A new ironSource and Digiday survey of 172 brands and agencies and 344 consumers who play in-app mobile games ... read more

Food52’s program to pay independent creators for their digital content, like videos and recipes, has attracted more than $2 million from brands since it was created in September 2020. Now the food-focused publisher is looking ... read more

Despite this year’s awards show ratings slump, Verizon is still bullish on the Academy Awards as a marketing platform.  The brand is rolling out seven new spots this weekend including one during the pre-show, five ... read more

Snap beat first-quarter estimates yesterday, and continues to lean into its video and AR ads to drive e-commerce through its younger audience.  Snap piqued Wall Street’s interest several years ago when its founder, Evan Spiegel, ... read more

In 2018, a group of publishers in Sydney, Australia were told by a Facebook executive that the platform was on a mission to revitalize journalism. For the media companies that refused to work with Facebook, ... read more

Turns out, some advertisers will walk their talk on behaving ethically — to a point. Sure, we’ve been here before, but CEOs have short memories and people are wising up to that apathy; something had ... read more

It has been nearly a year since the tragic killing of George Floyd sent the United States into a racial reckoning that forced companies to be held accountable for their low diversity rates. Conversations about ... read more

Kunal Gupta, CEO, Nova The time is here to build bridges, not walls. The walled gardens first lured in advertisers with the promise of reach. They delivered on that promise, and then innovated with beautiful ... read more

As other publishers kick the tires on identity technologies designed to replace third-party cookies, The New York Times is ruling them out. In a conversation with Digiday, the publisher’s svp of products Allison Murphy said the ... read more

In this week’s Media Briefing, senior editor of research and features Max Willens reports on how individual authors are forming ways of working together outside the traditional media company model. The pros and cons of ... read more

Pinterest wants retailers and merchants to think globally about what they can do on its platform. To encourage this, Pinterest is expanding its integration with Shopify to 27 new countries.  On April 21, the sharing ... read more

Ian Schafer knows something about dysfunctional workplaces and bad bosses. One of the veteran marketer’s jobs early in his career was VP of new media at Miramax, the entertainment company co-founded and run by someone ... read more

The effort to monetize Clubhouse is in full swing. The $4 billion audio app recently announced its first monetization feature for creators, but a new startup is looking to beat them to the punch. Clubmarket ... read more

A bipartisan group of U.S. legislators have introduced a bill that aims to close legal loopholes in federal law permitting data brokers and other firms to sell people’s personal information — including mobile location data ... read more

The right price for a podcast subscription has always been a bit of a question mark. The industry’s creators are about to get lots of opportunities to figure it out. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced ... read more

Facebook has kept mostly quiet about its plans to build a version of Instagram for children under the age of 13, which has already drawn the ire of parents, child advocates and U.S. lawmakers concerned ... read more

Danielle Belton has a difficult task before her. On April 12, she stepped in as HuffPost’s editor-in-chief following a tumultuous time for the BuzzFeed-owned news outlet, especially at a time when digital publishers are battling ... read more

Co-working space budgets for individual employees will become a post-pandemic norm, according to a survey by WeWork. The companies already doing so have picked their partners based on location rather than pre-pandemic perks like on-tap ... read more

The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how publishers including BuzzFeed, Vice Media Group and Vox Media are producing scripted programs in addition to the unscripted projects with which they are traditionally associated. ... read more

Bed, Bath & Beyond is overhauling its digital strategy to attract new customers and keep up with the increase of online shopping ushered in by the coronavirus crisis. The digital-first overhaul includes a website revamp ... read more

Keith Norman, head of political and enterprise sales, Premion With renewed optimism around economic recovery, marketers are resetting priorities to capitalize on an impending wave of consumer revenge spending — the kind of shopping or buying ... read more

Over the past 12 months, the ad industry has seen unprecedented change brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.   One change that has been particularly interesting to observe is the staggering increase in time spent consuming ... read more

This article was reported on — and first published by — Digiday sibling Glossy. This week, I offer a fly-on-the-wall look at what diversity and inclusion mean at Ulta Beauty. Following George Floyd’s death and ... read more

The stress levels experienced in the past year caused many consumers to turn to cannabis as a coping mechanism. That increased interest led dispensaries to bump up their ad spend, adopt the buy online, pickup ... read more

The in-housing trend will not go away, but it is in reverse — to a point. Turns out, it’s too expensive, too complicated and too political for many companies to do at any real scale. ... read more

The allure of Substack has lured many journalists away from their traditional newsroom roles to a position of becoming their own editors, artists, marketers, accountants, and most importantly, bosses. Emily Atkin was ... read more

As vaccine availability and eligibility has ramped up across the country, people who were already planning to get the vaccine will likely do so without much of a nudge from marketers. For the people ... read more

This article was reported on — and first published by — Digiday sibling Glossy. As American CBD companies expand internationally, they have a world of both opportunity and regulations to navigate.  In late March, China’s ... read more

One year into the pandemic, and workers are drowning in a sea of instant message ‘pings’ and video calls.  Collaboration tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom have been lifesavers for businesses, but they ... read more

Even for those of us who grew up playing video games, surveying the gaming industry today is a case study in cognitive dissonance. Gaming in 2021 is an enormous, still-growing business that encompasses vast ecosystems ... read more

Apple’s iOS 14 changes are driving significant shifts in the app ecosystem. For gaming businesses, these new changes will make it challenging to show targeted ads. That said, the mobile game economy continues to boom, ... read more

René Plug, chief business development officer, 1plusX The cookieless web is just around the corner, with the run-up to third-party cookie deprecation reaching its finale next year.   The trend toward the unraveling of personal ... read more

The gaming world was abuzz with the news that Ludwig Ahgren had broken all Twitch subscriber-gain records during a 31-day livestream at the urging of his followers, growing his paying sub base to 282,000. The ... read more

Publishers are already torn over whether using email-based identity technologies in the hopes of generating higher ad revenue is worth scaring off visitors with a roadblock requiring their email addresses. Complicating the dilemma: apps ... read more

Money can’t buy you creativity on TikTok, but it can buy the reach that gets it noticed — as Pepsi is discovering. As ever, knowing when to pay-to-play on social networks remains a hot topic ... read more

In this year’s annual TV advertising upfront marketplace, advertisers will be forced to confront their long-held programming preferences as they face a tight TV and streaming ad market while attempting to chase audiences from traditional ... read more

The coming cookie changes are going to scramble the pecking order of media (except for Google, of course). Verizon Media’s hoping that shake-up will add to the momentum gathering behind its DSP.  Over the past ... read more

The gaming world was abuzz with the news that Ludwig Ahgren had broken all Twitch subscriber-gain records during a 31-day livestream at the urging of his followers, growing his paying sub base to 282,000. The ... read more

TikTok-native publishers like Flighthouse and SongPsych have reached a milestone in the maturity of a modern media company. Like the YouTube-native, Facebook-native, Instagram-native and Snapchat-native publishers that came before them, these outlets that have amassed ... read more

If you’re a newly remote worker planning to relocate this year, you might just find a destination willing to pay you thousands of dollars to do so. From Oklahoma to Alabama, cities and regions all ... read more

In recent years there has been rapid growth in audio content available for streaming. Last year, 2020 was a particularly big moment for audio growth, one characterized by a massive shift in lifestyle. Many adults ... read more

Malvertising — the use of ad tech by malicious actors to attack end users at scale — has been a silent but insidious aspect of digital advertising in recent years. Now, however, the extent of the ... read more

Media buyers say unresponsive Facebook ad reps aren’t a new problem, but some say the issue has gotten worse in recent months with the looming iOS 14 update from Apple. “Previously you could get problems ... read more

After a TikTok video featuring one of its products went viral on TikTok earlier this year, the skincare brand eos learned two valuable lessons: people appreciate a bit of risqué branding, and TikTok users will ... read more