No Billionaires Allowed
Would the internet be a better place if it weren’t run by a handful of billionaires? Free our Feeds certainly thinks so, The Verge reports.
Galvanized by Mark Zuckerberg’s recent heel turn (or “going full Musk,” as the Free our Feeds website puts it), the new organization plans to raise $30 million over three years. Their goal is to create a public interest foundation in support of Bluesky’s AT Protocol, an open, decentralized network for building social networking platforms.
Their open letter – already signed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and “enshittification” term coiner Cory Doctorow, among others – praises Bluesky’s efforts toward building an “open and healthy social media ecosystem,” but warns that without independent intervention, its business model will inevitably gravitate around profits.
Not surprisingly, there’s no mention of how advertising will fit into that ecosystem – likely because it doesn’t. (Bluesky CEO Jay Graber already told Wired in February that the company has no plans to “enshittify the network with ads.”)
Which means that, should Free our Feeds prove successful, the way we think about social media marketing will need a huge overhaul. But, hey, if it means people actually enjoy being online again, isn’t that worth some lost ad inventory?
Supply Pet Optimization
More brands are cutting the number of ad tech middlemen involved in their ad buys to save on costs.
And SSPs, which far outnumber DSPs, must work even harder to differentiate themselves from the competition and disintermediate DSPs (although they’ll never call it disintermediation).
Mars Pet Nutrition North America is one brand now turning to an SSP – PubMatic – to streamline CTV buys after first testing a campaign for its Greenies treats in March.
Instead of using its go-to DSPs, Google’s DV360 and Yahoo DSP, Mars bought ad supply for its Greenies campaign through programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace deals via PubMatic. By avoiding multiple DSP fees, the brand was able to put 8% more of its budget into actual working media. Mars also exceeded its sales lift goal by 20% and incremental sales target by 126%.
The reason for the test was to “circumvent many of the upfront fees charged by the DSPs we traditionally use,” Jonathan Tuttle, associate director of media, tells Digiday. DV360 fees usually hover around 13%.
DSPs may have to compete even harder for their slice of the CTV ad pie.
I Have Crossed Oceans Of Internet To Find You
Marketers may not be anxious about what will happen when TikTok’s ban goes into effect next week. But that’s OK, because TikTok creators have collectively decided they’re going to be anxious enough for the whole internet.
CNBC reports that social media influencers have started encouraging followers to migrate with them to other platforms (using coded language and signals so as not to get shadow banned), while they themselves are downloading and migrating their existing content elsewhere.
It’s a familiar tune to those of us who still remember the Great Vine Migration of 2017. But back then, Twitter shut down the infamous short-form video app to focus on its own product, Periscope, and at that point advertisers had already moved on to greener pastures.
In contrast, TikTok is still thriving – so much that it doesn’t really need America, argues Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick. The app’s real endgame was to become an ecommerce platform, and as Broderick writes, “our little viral videos don’t really matter amid the Chinese social shopping arms race.”
So, as always, it’s the little guy getting hurt the most – even if “little” in this case means thousands of dollars in brand deals, for some influencers. (It’s certainly smaller than the brands’ overall marketing budgets, at least!)
But Wait! There’s More
Federated social media platform Mastodon announces its pivot to a nonprofit structure. [TechCrunch]
Hiring slowed and departures increased for TikTok’s US team in the back half of 2024. [Adweek]
Workers should expect 39% of their core skills to be obsolete by 2030, a new report from the World Economic Forum claims. [Search Engine Journal]
The petition against WPP’s new return-to-office mandate has reached 10,000 signatures. [Campaign]
Meta used Library Genesis, a Russian depository of pirated books, to train its generative AI language models, according to a recently unredacted court filing. [Wired]
You’re Hired
Planet Fitness hires a new CMO, Brian Povinelli, and a new chief development officer, Chip Ohlsson. [release]
Sandie Hawkins, TikTok’s former head of US ecommerce, joins Teikametrics as president. [release]
Eyeo brings on Goswijn Thijssen, former CMO of Google Cloud EMEA North, as its managing director of user business. [release]
