Are We The Baddies?
In this longread essay – which, tl;dr, is explicated using the past century of watchmaking as a metaphor – tech investor Paul Graham makes the case that any given “golden age” arrives when the best thinkers and doers of the time put themselves to use by solving true, interesting problems.
That doesn’t bode well for us in a society where many top-end thinkers, not to mention frontier AI labs, increasingly put their efforts toward … advertising.
“In 1960 expensive watches cost a lot because they cost a lot to manufacture, and what the buyer got in return was the most accurate timekeeping device, for its size, that could be made. Now they cost a lot because brands spend a lot on advertising and use tricks to limit supply,” Graham writes.
Graham’s use of “brand” is grammatically and philosophically akin to how one might describe, like, asbestos or lead. It is a poison that is part of modern society but to be avoided.
“Is there some edifying lesson we can salvage from the wreckage?” Graham, self-referencing his grim description of “brand” usurping quality and good thinking in modern American. “One obvious lesson is to stay away from brand.”
Polymarketing
Speaking of baddies!
Kalshi and Polymarket aren’t just dominating the media landscape because Americans are excited about gambling on current events. It’s also because of how ubiquitous their marketing materials have become – particularly on college campuses.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, both companies have oriented their marketing strategies around targeting 18- to 21-year-old students, including paying social media influencers, offering commissions to frats on new sign-ups and sponsoring parties.
Why students? Because they “spend money recklessly,” according to what one of Kalshi’s 19-year-old social media marketers was apparently told by a supervisor (which Kalshi’s official spokesperson refutes).
Both companies are founded by current 20-somethings and staffed largely by fellow Gen Zers, so both employees and users skew young.
At one point, Kalshi even hired a 15-year-old streamer – whom Polymarket was also trying to recruit – to promote the brand on X. A week later, a Kalshi employee messaged the streamer, “Yo brother, legal team confirmed that we can’t work with minors rn.”
In many states, the legal gambling age is 21, not 18. Which, for Kalshi and Polymarket, means there’s a window before DraftKings or Fanduel are legally allowed to target their users, but young adults can get their betting fix through “prediction markets.”
Performance In The Big Citi
Brands and measurement companies are divided on the idea of performance TV, with some insisting that TV ads really do drive direct sales and others calling the concept overly simplified, or even straight-up BS.
Financial services company Citi is decidedly in the first camp. “I would call BS on whoever called BS on performance TV,” Mike Venables, head of media, US brand advertising & experiential marketing at Citi, said at a panel on Friday at Convergent TV World in NYC.
TV and video are a “core part” of the company’s performance, said Venables, adding that Citi has shifted away from referring to “stages of a funnel.” High-quality measurement tools are worth investing in, he said, to understand where ad dollars are making a difference – and TV dollars are paying off. Video is playing a “massive part” in marketing its new credit card.
Data clean rooms that can both track measurement and target audiences help Venables know who to reach and where – but even that isn’t necessarily enough to drive sales.
Reaching the right audience actually becomes counterproductive when marketers don’t pay attention to frequency. Citi uses a tool that automatically caps frequency once a user has been served a particular number of ads within a given time frame, say, a week.
If you reach someone the wrong way (or, specifically, too often), said Venables, you create “negative reach,” bringing marketers back to square one – and driving consumers up the wall.
But Wait! There’s More!
The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green explains why he bought $150 million worth of TTD stock, takes shots at industry coverage of his company and predicts Amazon won’t have a DSP in five years. [The Current]
So far, retail and CPG brands are dominating ChatGPT’s ad tier. [Marketing Dive]
Anthropic’s AI hacked the Firefox browser. Like whoa. [WSJ]
What should Netflix do with the money it got out of walking away from the WBD deal? [Business Insider]
German publisher Axel Springer will acquire UK newspaper The Telegraph for £575 million (about $770 million). [The Telegraph]
DoorDash CMO Kofi Amoo-Gottfried will step down after seven years. [Adweek]
Political ads on Meta platforms during the 2020 election mostly targeted people who already supported a given party. The campaigns had “no detectable effect” on political knowledge, polarization, candidate favorability or turnout, per a recent study. [Nature]
OpenAI scales back its shopping plans for ChatGPT. [The Information]
You’re Hired!
Newsletter platform beehiiv appoints Darren Chait as its first CMO. [Adweek]
