Digiday Sunday

We had a strong week of coverage that ranged nicely across our beats. Coverage of publishers was particularly well received, with stories unpacking the pivot to AI and future revenue strategies landing in our top five most-viewed stories for the week. We also featured a media agency scoop that broke the news that two firms under Interpublic Group are in a legal wrangle over unfair competition regarding identity solutions. X remains a point of interest and a look at the platform’s latest efforts to convince advertisers that it is a brand safe environment performed well as did a look at a new development around cloud-based privacy enhancements by Snap and Snowflake. – James Cooper

Story highlights

Ronan Shields and Michael Burgi teamed up on the week’s most-read piece reporting that two companies under holding company giant Interpublic Group are defendants in a court case in which a plaintiff claims they conspired to develop a competing identity-resolution product unfairly. As they reported, ‘The dispute centers around Acxiom and Kinesso’s alleged misconduct regarding a data licensing agreement and the misappropriation of Adstra’s trade secrets for unfair competition, citing multiple complaints over data licensing, including the unilateral alteration of agreements.’

Sara Guaglione wrote a smart breakdown of what Buzzfeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti is really pushing towards with his announcement last week that the publisher will morph into an AI-driven technology and media company. As she reported, ‘At a time of declining referral traffic and other audience attention challenges, Peretti’s solution is for BuzzFeed to focus on its own platforms to drive traffic and pursue generative AI chatbots as a new content format. Whether this will lead to a sustainable business model for a legacy digital publisher remains to be seen.’

? Marty Swant reported out an interesting analysis of the news that Snap and Snowflake are developing ways for advertisers to build privacy-enhancing technologies with Snowflake’s Marketing Data Cloud. As he reported, ‘In interviews with Digiday, executives said the integration will make it easier for advertisers to securely store data from various cloud providers, optimize campaigns, run advanced measurement algorithms without building a bespoke back-end integration.’

Krystal Scanlon had a well-read check in piece on X and its latest stab at convincing advertisers that it is a place where their brands will be safe to appear. But true to form for the platform, there still seems to be a fair amount of uncertainty, As she reported, ‘According to LinkedIn, there are currently 37 employees with “safety” in their job title. Plus, X made?a big announcement?last week (April 2) that Kylie McRoberts is taking the helm as head of safety. She remains somewhat of a mystery, as her X profile is private and her LinkedIn profile has seemingly been deleted.’

Li Lu and Catherine Wolf produced and published an exhaustive and well-read original research report that looked at how publishers are strategizing around how to make the most of their revenue streams. As they wrote in the intro to the report, ‘Publishers are placing their bets on both traditional and alternative revenue streams in 2024 — even after a tumultuous 2023, when publishers’ revenues?turned out to be less lucrative?than expected and the media industry saw?a seemingly endless cycle of layoffs.

Tim Peterson ’s WTF video piece last week focused on Digiday’s famous Challenge Board at DPS on which attendees post the top obstacles their businesses face at the moment. During this spring’s Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado, as he explains, execs put forth a ‘host of issues that ranged from traffic troubles to AI anxiety.’ Check out the video here

Kimeko McCoy ’s edition of the Digiday weekly podcast featured a chat with Lara Cohen, vp of partners and business development at Linktree, who, as Kimeko wrote in her intro to the interview, is focused on the growing creator economy, monetization at Linktree and what maturation looks like in this space. Give a listen here

?See you next Sunday!