Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
Overconsumed
The 80/20 rule stating that relatively few people or causes create the vast majority of results isn’t new.
But there’s a CPG craze underway to capture narrow slices of outsized customers.
For instance, a growing and vocal subset of Americans proudly own dozens of deodorants for different moods or occasions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Or there are people who put so many products in a washing machine – detergent, bleach, brightener – that it creates a waxy film on clothes and leaves a mildewy smell.
To create more demand, there’s now a push to include new liquids or pods so clothes aren’t funky coming out of the dryer (though the real solution would be to stop using fabric softener and dryer sheets).
A Church & Dwight marketer once told me its First Response pregnancy test brand has a segment of women who take – no joke – hundreds of tests over the course of a pregnancy. They want to see the positive every day.
Finding out which customers are true power-consumers will, quietly, be the golden ticket.
A Credit To Journalism
There’s a renewed push in Congress to subsidize local news and advertising.
The new proposal is a successor to the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which failed to pass in 2020 and 2021. It would provide local news tax credits of $25,000 per journalist in the first year, plus $15,000 per journalist in each of the following four years.
The bill would also provide $5,000 in tax credits for local business ads in newspapers for companies with 50 or fewer employees ($2,500 over the next four years).
One key difference from the previous bill is the new one doesn’t offer tax credits to households for purchasing local news subscriptions. That would create complications of what else is included in a subscription, for one (it isn’t always just local news), and could turn off legislators who might be criticized for “supporting” subscriptions to publications reviled by their base.
Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA) put the bill forward on Friday with the intent to pass it in funding bills this year, The Seattle Times reports.
Ready Or Not, Here I Chrome
Last week, Google Ads published findings that exhorted adoption of the Chrome Privacy Sandbox. Now, it’s Chrome’s turn.
This week, Chrome will likely begin expanding the Privacy Sandbox APIs to general Chrome users. According to a blog post, the Privacy Sandbox APIs will ship to 35% of its browsers this week. That jumps to 60% in a week or two, followed by the full rollout in mid-August.
That timeline presumes the privacy API expansion goes as planned, with no unexpected issues reported by users, publishers or other tech companies (not to mention advertisers themselves).
Aside from legitimately evaluating Privacy Sandbox proposals, the team will also share technical details from sites that worked with it to simultaneously run third-party cookie- and Privacy Sandbox-based programs. To date, Chrome’s testable cohorts have been so small that companies can’t reach statistically significant or worthwhile conclusions.
Users may see new things in Chrome, too. Alongside the for-business privacy APIs, Chrome will introduce new ad privacy controls for users.
But Wait, There’s More!
A dash of optimism for Netflix’s ads biz. [Insider]
Seven tech companies, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Amazon, take a White House pledge to promote safety and transparency in generative AI. [Axios]
The FTC withdraws its internal suit over Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, opening the door for the deal to proceed. [Seeking Alpha] But the UK’s CMA, the lone regulator to block the deal, says Microsoft hasn’t satisfied its concerns. [Bloomberg]
Amazon is bringing palm scanning checkout tech to Whole Foods stores by the end of the year. [CNBC]
Reddit users trick generative AI into writing fake news about a fictional update to World of Warcraft. [Ars Technica]
You’re Hired!
Innovid hires Jeff Austin as SVP of revenue operations. [release]
