Of Paramount Importance
Paramount’s break with Nielsen late last year was a painful blow to the incumbent TV ad ratings provider. At the time, Nielsen said it couldn’t stomach the 50% price reduction Paramount wanted in the new contract.
But the two have ended their measurement standoff – in time for the upfronts ad-buying bonanza this year, Variety reports.
Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks has a carefully crafted comment in the announcement that “[Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao] and his team continue to meet the needs of our marketplace across all our platforms, and we are incredibly pleased to reinforce and reinvigorate our deal with our longtime partner.”
Notice the lukewarm “meet the needs of our marketplace” praise of Nielsen’s product, compared to Paramount being “incredibly pleased” to once again sell ads on the de facto ratings provider used by buyers.
As with many compromises, nobody’s happy. Paramount has two measurement contracts, having renewed with VideoAmp last month, and swallows its pride to rejoin Nielsen’s roster. Nielsen likely took a price cut of some kind, though it’s not reported.
Rage Clicks Against The Machine
Digital ads now cost more and convert less often compared to last year, Search Engine Journal reports.
Why? Well, have you looked at the internet lately?
According to a study of over 90 billion sessions by experience intelligence platform Contentsquare (so take it with a grain of salt, since customer journeys are the company’s whole bread and butter), global website traffic and organic traffic on the 6,000 brand websites it tracked are down by 3.3% and 5.7%, respectively.
User engagement metrics also fell by 6.5% from 2023 to 2024. Some signals, like rage clicks (meaning times when a user clicked at least three times in less than two seconds), had a negative impact on session depth and user retention rates.
On the one hand, the general web experience has gone to hell in a handbasket, so advertising results are down. But organic site traffic is also down, so a larger share of traffic comes through paid media via sponsored search or ad clicks. So many sites aren’t doing better in terms of overall traffic, or traffic is down slightly, but their costs are way up.
The real solution, then, is making the internet less annoying to use. Easier said than done.
X Parte
Somehow, in between efforts to shut down USAID and manipulate federal employees into resigning, Elon Musk still has time to sue advertisers for not giving him enough money.
Per Adweek, X has added Pinterest, Lego, Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Tyson Foods, Shell International and health care tech company Abbott Laboratories to its lawsuit, alleging that they colluded with one another to “withhold billions in advertising revenue” from the social media platform.
These brands join CVS, Mars, Twitch and Danish energy firm Ørsted as defendants, as well as the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) – although the latter disbanded just days after the lawsuit was filed.
The timing is interesting, given that last week Meta announced it would start testing ads on its own X clone, Threads. Hypothetically speaking, it’s not hard to imagine that a company that files lawsuits based on perceived slights against it might assume that adding more defendants would perhaps discourage those brands from experimenting with potential competitors.
Or maybe those brands just haven’t returned to the platform yet like Oracle, Apple and Disney already have. Either seems likely at this point.
But Wait! There’s More
Nielsen’s OOH measurement now reportedly covers 100% of the US population. [TVRev]
Outbrain completes its acquisition of Teads, takes on Teads as main brand name. [release]
Trump wants his newly created US sovereign wealth fund to buy TikTok. [TechCrunch]
Ad tech startup tvScientific raises $25.5 million in Series B funding. [Axios]
Two media agencies, PlusMedia and Cage Point, are merging to form a new shop called Mile Marker. [Digiday]
You’re Hired
Erin Foxworthy begins a new position at Snowflake as the Global Industry GTM Lead for Marketers and Advertisers. [LinkedIn]
Penske Media Corporation appoints Dan Gerber as VP of strategic partnerships. [release]
