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The Mobility Ability
The retail media boom has spawned a subcategory of first-party data owners in the travel and hospitality vertical, and they’ve got their own terminology.
When Uber formalized its new advertising group last October, for example, GM Mark Grether referred to the next big wave of media as “mobility media.”
Under that umbrella you can put hotel companies, online travel brokers, ride-share operators, gas and electric car-charging stations and, now, even a major auto manufacturer.
Stellantis, which formed in 2021 as a merger between the German Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Group, is creating a new data services subsidiary called Mobilisights, Reuters reports.
The main sales pitch for the auto maker’s data and software licensing biz is that by relaying road hazards, it can help reduce accidents. But that data could also be used to tailor insurance offerings to drivers, says Mobilisights CEO Sanjiv Ghate.
Having Mobilisights as a stand-alone subsidiary will make it easier to strike partnerships, says Ghate, who is based out of San Francisco. (Stellantis HQ is in Amsterdam.) His background is heavy on ad tech, with stints at Yahoo, YuMe, AppNexus, LiveRamp and HERE, a location data company. But don’t hold that against him.
Cratering Creators
OK, so, the live-shopping craze is more hype than cycle. And perhaps the newsletter revolution has petered out, too.
But nothing can stop the creator economy, right?
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Daily Roundup
Perhaps the question should be: “Can anything start the creator economy?”
Tech reporter Alex Kantrowitz’s latest Big Technology newsletter asks an uncomfortable question: What if the economy of influencers and creators is less sustainable than people thought? If it’s viable at all, that is.
“After years of hype, the Creator Economy is slamming into reality,” Kantrowitz says.
Although the social platforms have poured tens of millions of dollars into creator funds, they’ve failed to kickstart self-sustainable income for the majority of creators. Meanwhile, influencer programs are shuttering and VC investments in creator-focused startups have run dry.
The exception is YouTube, which is frankly the only platform where many online creators (not just top viral celebrities) can maintain steady businesses.
Still, the future is not totally bleak. “There’s still plenty of opportunity for creators who produce work online,” writes Kantrowitz. “I’m doing it here on Substack, a platform that struggled to raise a funding round, and eventually gave up, last year.”
Video Woes
Everyone wants to be TikTok these days. But is the latest pivot to video working? Probably not.
In the most recent sign that publishers were probably too quick in jumping on the vertical video bandwagon, Future PLC says it will shut down its Atlanta, GA video production hub roughly a year after it first opened, Digiday reports.
According to two former employees who came aboard to work at the location, the video production team Future promised to hire never materialized, and company leadership provided little direction.
While some publishers are seeing increased engagement with vertical video, the mechanisms for monetizing that content just aren’t there, Adweek reports. For all the buzz around TikTok, it’s still in the early stages of its rev-share program and only accounts with at least 100,000 followers receive a cut. YouTube promised to roll out a 45% revenue share for Shorts in early 2023 – but that’s a smaller cut than the 55% publishers get from traditional video. Facebook’s vertical video rev-share model is still in the works, and inconsistent payments have plagued Instagram Reels.
Maybe this time publishers will learn not to pin their hopes on half-baked video products. But don’t bet on it.
But Wait, There’s More!
Mike Shields: The TV industry seems to have no answer to TikTok. [blog]
Streaming changed TV. Is TV changing streaming back? [NYT]
Twitter’s security headaches mount following an alleged user data leak said to be the result of a software flaw. [Bloomberg]
Google and Spotify are working on cross-device uninterrupted audio streaming. [MediaPost]
You’re Hired!
InMobi adds three ad industry veterans to its global ad monetization team. [release]
