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The Unbeatable You
The podcasting business is colliding with vlogging, as popular YouTube accounts and podcast hosts branch out into a hybrid video podcast format. The big winner, of course, is YouTube.
One recent report found that YouTube is actually the biggest podcasting platform, The Guardian reports. YouTube stumbled backward into the distinction by dint of being YouTube, as in a general repository for all video content.
Although Joe Rogan signed an exclusive deal with Spotify, for example, he still posts lots of content to YouTube.
YouTube is valuable because of its sheer ubiquity.
Consider this: Meta clamped down on ad creative for Facebook and Instagram this year in part because people were reposting TikToks directly to its apps. That’s no bueno for Instagram, but YouTube doesn’t care. YouTube benefits massively when people repurpose TikToks as YouTube Shorts.
The same has been true for legacy media, not just online platforms. Comcast, for instance, is Google’s bitter rival on the TV and video ad tech front. (Google Ad Manager vs. FreeWheel). But there’s no getting around how deeply Comcast and NBCUniversal need YouTube, which is the main archive of movie trailers and NBC’s own online content. Google, meanwhile, needs Comcast for … nothing.
Ratings Games
The NFL season will open this Thursday with a broadcast on … Amazon. And it could mark the beginning of a consequential deal for the TV industry.
“Amazon is somewhat of a test dummy for the NFL,” Jimmy Spano, Carat USA’s group director, tells Marketing Brew.
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Spano is referring to the interest in Amazon’s live ratings. The trend has been that live TV tentpoles lose ratings and cultural cache with the shift to streaming: the Oscars, the Super Bowl, even the Olympics. Amazon is telling advertisers to expect Thursday Night Football ratings to drop from about 16 million to 12 million.
But Amazon’s opportunity goes beyond ratings. It could demonstrate how streaming offers a better overall media package than linear TV. Amazon is creating Thursday night watch parties on Twitch and it can produce content with the NFL to retarget viewers. Not to mention the opportunity to sell NFL merch.
But the opportunity goes beyond sports.
If Prime owned the Oscars broadcast, it could show every award, and the Academy wouldn’t have to yank winners off the stage with cut-off music after 30 seconds.
That – not sports ratings – is the real TV dam to break.
Signal Hire
Encrypted messaging app Signal named Meredith Whittaker, a former FTC advisor and AI researcher for Google, as its president, The New York Times reports. Whittaker will be Signal’s first president.
In an interview with Austrian publication Der Standard, Whittaker voices her opposition to the advertising industry’s “surveillance business model” and how that model has contributed to a handful of Big Tech monopolies. She claims Signal “won’t participate in the surveillance business model” under her leadership, meaning the messaging platform won’t be ad-supported any time soon. Instead, it’s looking into a subscription- or donation-based model.
Whittaker is also a proponent of encrypted communications to safeguard user privacy. Regarding government efforts to bypass messaging encryption for law enforcement purposes, she says “there’s no spell you can cast to break encryption for one purpose and not break it for every other purpose.”
After working for Google for more than a decade, Whittaker left the company in protest of its use of AI for military projects. Since then, Whittaker has served as an advisor to FTC Chair Lina Khan on AI-related matters and as an AI and ethics professor at NYU.
But Wait, There’s More!
Apple plans to double its digital advertising business workforce. [FT]
Instagram was fined $400 million by the Irish data regulator for GDPR violations over posting children’s contact details. [Politico]
The definitive guide to what’s in and out in ad tech in 2022. [Digiday]
Yahoo buys The Factual, which creates news credibility ratings. [Axios]
You’re Hired!
Canela Media appoints Oswald Méndez as CMO. [release]
DDB Worldwide brings on Alex Lubar as its first president and global COO. [Ad Age]
