Priced Out
For many online advertisers, product prices and ad budgets are flip sides of the same coin.
Is a brand better off discounting prices by $1 or spending $1 more per purchase on ads?
For many of the biggest CPG brands, marketing budgets are tightening after years of inflation. When shoppers decreased their grocery spending after COVID lockdowns, execs protected their profit margins by hiking prices and accepting there’d be fewer total purchases.
But that doesn’t work forever.
During Pepsi’s earnings report last month, Barclays Bank Managing Director Lauren Lieberman called out an estimated $500 million decrease in ad spend in 2025. “I would think advertising would go up,” she queried.
She was right about the ad spend decrease, acknowledged CFO Stephen Schmitt. “We did get some efficiency from both the working and nonworking advertising line” – meaning Pepsi spent less on media and on marketing data and tech.
Except now Pepsi must cut prices, Bloomberg reports, having lost shelf space due to outsized price hikes. Seven-dollar Doritos led to plummeting sales, so it’s been reducing prices to win back shelves and customers.
Pepsi can’t avoid paying higher energy rates and must sacrifice some profit margin with its price reductions. Now, spending even less on marketing is the only thing Pepsi can do.
Turn On, Tune In, Question Mark??
YouTube has been leaning into its dominance on living room TV dominance these days. But you know what mobile and desktop still have that TV doesn’t (at least, not yet)? Robust interactive capabilities.
TechCrunch reports that YouTube recently posted a huge new wave of software engineering roles in California and Bengaluru, India, which hint at a bigger push toward making more interactivity possible on its TV apps.
Most of the listings mention working on new features for YouTube Live and YouTube Living Room products, such as developing new Shorts formats or the ability to chat with creators and send them gifts.
CTV interactivity isn’t new, of course, and data consistently suggests that users are more likely to engage with interactive content as they become more exposed to the new formats. But, so far, that exposure is still mostly limited to ad breaks, when users are already less likely to be paying attention.
Adding interactive features to the content across screens, like what YouTube may be planning to do, will normalize interactivity a lot more quickly than clickable ad breaks ever would. After all, which feels stickier: pressing a button during a commercial or during your favorite Vtuber’s livestream?
The Missing Links
Calling attention to the link in your Instagram bio is officially passé.
As with so many relics of a former, less-promotional internet, it was ecommerce that hammered the final nail in the “link in bio” coffin.
An Instagram update will allow creators – and brands, of course – to tag up to 30 product links in their Reels posts.
“For creators, when it comes to highlighting products, this means that the era of link in bio is finally over,” said Meta’s Head of Global Business Group, Nicola Mendelsohn, at Shoptalk Spring in Vegas last month.
As Tubefilter points out, third-party link hubs like Linktree have seen the writing on the wall for years.
Unsurprisingly, Linktree has refocused its business around creator monetization tools, data analytics and AI features. But that pits the startup against all the larger social media platforms that are doing the same thing – like TikTok or Instagram itself, for example.
In any case, the shift away from links spells trouble for another oft-forgotten subsection of social media monetizers: web publishers. But publishers always draw the short straw, so no surprises there.
But Wait! There’s More!
Who is OpenAI’s global head of ads, David Dugan? [Digiday]
YouTube starts showing 90-second unskippable ads to TV viewers. [9to5Google]
Samba TV and TiVo Ads announce a strategic data partnership in the UK. [release]
Nutella gets the kind of organic product placement marketers can only dream of, as a tub floats by on the Artemis II lunar mission’s livestream. [People]
VideoLAN’s VLC Media Player likewise capitalized on its own “seen on Artemis II” viral moment. [Mashable]
Muckrack researches which journalists and publications are most frequently cited by AI answer engines, with specialist B2B pubs outperforming general news outlets. [Press Gazette]
President Trump and FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened CNN with an investigation and “accountability” over its reporting of the conflict and ceasefire negotiations in Iran. That said, neither the president nor FCC have jurisdiction over CNN, a privately owned cable network. [The Independent]
President Jeff Shell is out at Paramount. [Variety]
You’re Hired!
Mundial Media hires Matt Weisbecker as chief revenue officer. [release]
