Digiday Sunday
Digiday:?A solid week of coverage with news analysis reporting on Google’s antitrust trial continuing to draw strong visits and views. Stories focused on Google becoming more aggressive in its defense, the trial by numbers, ad industry speculation on a potential breakup and what could be the negative consequences of such a ruling were all in the top five most-read stories. Our coverage of the retail media space consistently performs well and a story on a potential reckoning of the sector was not an exception. Stories on how sports leagues and clubs have been investing in their own streaming efforts and an agency holding company’s big bet on the promise of commerce provided great analysis for our readers on two important and expanding industry sectors. We also produced four authoritative daily briefings covering the DMexco conference in Cologne – James Cooper
?Story highlights
Ronan Shields , Seb Joseph and Marty Swant continued their Google antitrust trial coverage partnership with the week’s most read story that reported that Google is on longer trying to appear as the aggrieved nice guy. As they reported, ‘Most tellingly, it dropped the veneer of wanting to be everyone’s friend and finally came out and basically said, ‘We’re just plain better than our competition.’ That’s at least a paraphrase of what many have inferred while observing evidence and testimony from the East Virginia courtroom — not Google’s verbatim defense.’
Other well-read Google trial coverage from last week included:
Kimeko McCoy pulled together a smart analysis of the retail media sector and how its rapid ?and complex expansion might be poised for a correction. As she reported, ‘With more than 200 retail media networks (and counting) and finite media dollars, agency executives say a retail media reckoning may be on the horizon. Retail media networks (RMNs) have been touted as the industry’s latest silver bullet. But given that glut of competition, agency execs say they’re advising clients to be more calculated with their RMN spend.’
Sam Bradley had a look at how – as huge and overly complex media rights deals like the NBA’s pact with Amazon Prime Video are cut – sports leagues and clubs have been quietly, but steadily, investing in their own streaming efforts. As he reported, ‘The NFL overhauled its app ahead of the season’s kickoff last week, placing its ad-free RedZone streaming service at the center of its NFL+ premium customer offering. At the same time, European soccer leagues including France’s Ligue 1 and Italy’s Serie A have pushed forward with their streaming efforts, with the former’s games now shown online only in the crucial U.K. and Ireland market.’
Michael Burgi had a good, fast turnaround daily on the news that agency holding company giant Publicis had purchased Mars United Commerce in an unambiguous bid to strengthen?its commerce abilities. As he reported, ‘Neither Mars United Commerce nor Publicis would comment on the acquisition, but Digiday has learned MCU will be offered alongside Publicis’ end-to-end suite of commerce capabilities and made available to all clients and agency teams globally.’ With more than 1,000 employees in 14 “hubs” across the world, there are various estimates of MUC’s annual revenue — somewhere between $75 million and $185 million.
Kayleigh Barber ’s edition of the Digiday podcast featured an interesting chat with longtime journalist John Patrick Pullen and founding editor of Long Lead, a long-form journalism production company. In the episode, Pullen shared why Long Lead is focused on supporting the art of journalism and how his team determines the best format for different stories that come across his desk. Give a listen here
?Here are the Digiday + Briefings for the week
See you next Sunday!