Digiday Sunday

Digiday: A busy week with an interesting mix of stories performing well. Amazon's push into the media space, specifically as a DSP, continues to be of interest to readers who are looking to make sense of the centers of power as the landscape shifts on a number of different fronts. The evolution of the CMO role was also a topic of interest as was the reckoning around the gaming/esports industry which until recently looked to the likes of Disney as a peer and competitive set only to have those ambitions dashed. The evolution of the influencer marketing economy continues to be a hot topic as is how media agencies will tap AI to make better sense of it for clients. And the pricing of first-party data has emerged as a potential pain point between agencies and publishers. – James Cooper

?Story highlights

Seb Joseph Ronan Shields and Julia Russell Tabisz teamed up on the week’s most-read piece with an analysis of the considerable work Amazon has to do to convince ad execs that its DSP offering is worthy of their consideration and dollars. As they reported – based on Digiday’s own research conducted by Julia – ‘Just 5% of the 44 respondents in a survey by Digiday chose Amazon as their preferred DSP if they could only select one. In contrast, nearly four in 10 (39%) opted for Google’s DV360. The same goes for The Trade Desk.’

?—In the wake of Starbucks’ removing the role of CMO from its C-suite structure, Kristina Monllos had a smart and well-read on piece?the evolution of the CMO . As she reported, ‘For businesses that are making changes to the CMO role, much of the change that’s happening is specific to each business, the industry that business is and the C-Suite’s appreciation and understanding of what marketing is able to do.’

? Alexander Lee took a few weeks to report on how Riot Games went from their stated ambition to become the next Disney-like entertainment colossus to seriously retrenching back to its core gaming products just to keep the lights on. As he reported, ‘Riot’s leaders embarked on a mission to transform it from a gaming company into a Disney-esque culture and entertainment giant, using Riot intellectual properties as a launchpad. But gaming activity returned to earth by the end of 2022, with global gaming revenue shrinking by nearly $10 billion year-over-year. As a result, these dreams faltered, making it imperative for Riot to refocus on game publishing to achieve its long-term goals as a company.

Antoinette S. pulled together a strong piece that looked at the shift happening in influencer marketing as influencers tap AI to make content – and agencies working with them are trying to create different types of content with new strategies and tools. As she reported, ‘In a new AI study on the?creator economy this month, influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy found that 92% of marketers have commissioned creator content either fully or partly using generative?AI.

? Kayleigh Barber Checked in with her media agency contacts to gauge their interest in tapping publishers’ first-party data offerings. The price it seems, at least at the moment, is now right. As she reported, ‘One publisher who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that they usually charge at least $2 on top of their standard CPMs for their first-party data or contextual targeting capabilities, slightly higher than the $1.50 premium they saw about a year ago. Certain categories, like entertainment and luxury, are fetching an even higher premium, they said. But that is a tough sell to make to media buyers.’?

? Tim Peterson 'sWTF video piece last week unpacked ‘shared storage’ in Google’s Privacy Sandbox which, as he explains, serves as a storage locker within people’s browsers that advertisers, publishers and ad tech firms can use to stash information across sites and to act on that information. Check out the video here

? Kayleigh Barber ’s edition of the Digiday weekly podcast featured longtime entertainment journalist, editor and media entrepreneur Janice Min and how she’s approaching advertisers for her latest project The Ankler. As she wrote in her intro, ‘Min shares how “tune-in” advertising and “for your consideration” advertising have persisted despite the strikes and how The Ankler, born on Substack, has expanded across platforms to become a full-fledged digital media outlet.’ Give a listen here

See you next Sunday!

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