Going Once, Going Twice
Livestreaming turns shopping into a sport, with spectators and participants among the viewers. Auctions are particularly dramatic. A growing category is livestreamed auctioneering, spanning cheap crap and trading card packs to fine art sales.
The New York Times profiles Bonnie Brennan, who was promoted to CEO of the auction house Christie’s this year. Brennan started her career in advertising, “because art world jobs were not going to allow me to support myself.”
Auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s adopted livestreams to deepen their supply of bidders. Nowadays, during popular weeks, Christie’s auction livestreams rack up millions of views.
“The economics of the industry remain challenging,” the Times reports.
But could a Sotheby’s or Christie’s bring itself to embrace advertising? Or are the livestreams simply a way to promote and advertise themselves?
Another auction streamer on the rise is the live-shopping, product-hawking app Whatnot, profiled by The Information.
Whatnot has done what no other app has managed to achieve in the US. It’s made live shopping sort of a thing. This is “eBay crossed with TikTok.” And, notably, the app just began allowing sellers to pay for better visibility in the app.
Which is to say, advertising.
Substack Fashionistas
Fashion influencers aren’t ditching Instagram, but they are searching for monetizable alternatives.
One surprising winner from this state of affairs is apparently Substack, writes Sarah Shapiro at Puck.
One major point of frustration among influencers is the inconstant Instagram algo. What works this week is no guarantee for next week.
The other biggie is affiliate earnings. It would be “a bit hyperbolic” to claim Substack is really challenging Instagram as an influencer and shopping hub. But creators like having the added text, and posts don’t disappear as if into the ether after about 24 hours.
Instagram, for all its efforts to build a shopping platform, has never been able to upgrade the experience. Making an impulse buy on Instagram “can often become an obstacle course,” she writes.
And that’s just for users, who are burdened by a cruddy in-app browser and other buggy aspects of Instagram’s shopping experience. Creators must navigate “an increasingly Rube Goldberg-esque process” in order to get credit for making a sale, like the “dreaded ‘link in bio.’” There are no shoppable links allowed in captions.
A good old-fashioned email driving to a dot-com feels refreshingly easy.
AI-Fueled Fallout
“Move fast and break things” might be a time-honored mandate in the tech world, but it doesn’t fly in other industries.
Like media, for example, notes Status reporter Oliver Darcy.
Last week, The Washington Post launched a feature within its mobile app that delivers AI-generated, personalized audio summaries of top stories.
But internal messages obtained by both Semafor and Status revealed that, almost immediately, the Post’s staff began flagging errors in the output of these “personal podcasts” – ranging from small pronunciation mistakes to completely invented quotes.
Speaking of companies in the Jeff Bezos orbit, Amazon recently faced a similar issue with its AI-powered Video Recaps, which it quietly began testing within its Prime Video platform last month.
As The Verge reports, those tests blew up when users discovered that the official recap video for “Fallout” Season 1 contains inaccuracies about several key plot details. The recaps have since been removed from the platform.
In any case, a pattern is forming, writes Darcy. Plenty of other media companies have already gotten burned by hastily pushed-out AI products that generate incorrect statements.
(And don’t even get us started on what AI-powered children’s toys are currently getting wrong.)
But Wait! There’s More
Trump signs an executive order to curb state-level AI regulations. [NYT]
What the IAB Tech Lab’s new CTV Ad Portfolio means for the sell side. [AdMonsters]
Inside AgenticAdvertising.org – a new governance effort for AdCP. [Tipsheet]
Marketers must overcome digital “beigification” and consumer distrust of brands, says a new Harris Poll survey. [Chief Marketer]
Corporate America is obsessed with “storyteller” titles, but what does that actually mean? [WSJ]
Both Netflix and Paramount Skydance shares plunged in the wake of their bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery. [Bloomberg]
Reddit argues it’s not like other social media platforms as it tries to avoid Australia’s new age ban. [TechCrunch]
AI has created a new talent paradox in programmatic agencies. [Digiday]
