Not Enough
A painful reckoning for many ecommerce and DTC marketers right now is that their reliance on YouTube and Meta as the workhorses for advertising and direct sales is no longer a viable solution.
Digital Turbine posits that, while those platforms still boast the same impressive billion-plus overall reach and ability to touch practically any American in a given span of time, many of those people are “light social users,” Adweek reports from its Mediaweek event in New York City.
Sony Pictures, for instance, can’t simply bank on Instagram or YouTube to reach the full population it wants to promote a certain trailer. Even if it reached a desired reach threshold, it’s not getting the frequency or exposure opportunities to sink in.
This has been true for DTC brands that build their brand 100% on Facebook and Instagram. The Meta platform remains the undisputed champion for DTC advertising. But it’s not enough.
Digital Turbine data suggests one opportunity is for social advertisers to try to scale their way into mobile gaming ads. Mobile gamers are “way under-indexing” to social media, says Digital Turbine marketing VP Greg Wester.
Artistic Infringement
One big change that came with the YouTube and TikTok music-based social revolution is song-recognition technology that flags incidents of IP infringement.
That’s now a precondition for the platforms having (or not having) permission to use certain songs.
But it’s also a big problem for artistic sports such as figure skating, synchronized swimming, some gymnastics routines and competitive dancing, among others, Slate reports. Those athletes casually use songs from wherever, often movies or popular singers. And they don’t have the rights.
The issue first arose during the Beijing 2022 Olympics, when athletes literally found out as they walked into the Olympic arena to do their sets that they were being sued, and had been unintentionally, constantly breaking the law for decades. They used the music, of course, but Peacock threatened to cut out the audio during TV playbacks of the routines.
This year, Olympians had to clear their music ahead of time, and some that couldn’t obtain licenses were forced to change at the last minute.
“[Music] was just something that as athletes we took for granted,” says Alexa Knierim, a champion figure skater.
Now You FTC Me
Speculators have assumed that Donald Trump will pull back on tech industry regulation upon his return to the presidency.
Which is why his latest pick for the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, Gail Slater, is so interesting.
As Reuters reports, before serving as the economic advisor for VP-elect JD Vance, Slater spent 10 years at the FTC under Democratic commissioner Julie Brill. She also previously served on the White House’s National Economic Council in 2018 and is considered an “antitrust hawk among Washington tech skeptics.”
In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote that “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!”
“Little Tech,” by the way, is a term favored by VC investor Marc Andreessen. Writer Dave Karpf at Tech Policy Press argues that, in practice, it’s less about helping small businesses and more about not getting in the way of what venture capitalists want.
Still, Slater’s appointment likely means the DOJ won’t be shutting down any of its current antitrust litigation. So better luck next time, Google.
But Wait! There’s More!
The curation conundrum: separating fact from fiction in ad tech’s latest obsession. [Digiday]
BuzzFeed is facing a $124 million debt crisis. [Adweek]
ESPN is officially on the Disney+ app. [Variety]
OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘shipmas’ include Sora and a new reasoning model. [The Verge]
You’re Hired!
Nielsen appoints Bill Michaels as the new chief product officer of Gracenote. [release]
MediaSense brings on Jamie Posnanski as CEO. Graham Brown, who previously held the title, will become executive chairman. [release]
Suzie Reider is now the executive vice president of Lyft Media and Lyft Business. [release]
