Digiday Sunday

Digiday: The best week of traffic stats in recent memory - certainly of the year so far - with amazing and comprehensive coverage of Google’s latest stay of execution of the third-party cookie and President Biden signing the TikTok ban rocketing total pages views and total visitors by double digits. A piece about a possible break up of giant agency holding company WPP also drew great audience numbers as did a look at how B2B brands are turning to more consumer avenues to market more effectively in an increasingly fragmented media space. Stories on Temu’s ad spending spree and what it signals for DTC brands and retail media, and on how the TikTok ban will likely spur brand marketers to direct more of their attention, and potentially ad dollars, to the burgeoning fediverse also drew great readership. – James Cooper

?Story highlights

Seb Joseph was an absolute tour de force with four separate pieces, one dropping tomorrow, all of which incisively presented and dissected the key implications of Google's latest decision to delay the full deprecation of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser to 2025. As he reported in his breaking news piece, which was out minutes after Google’s announcement and well ahead of our competition, ‘This is the third time Google has pushed back its original deadline set in January 2020. Back then, the tech behemoth promised to phase out third-party cookies “within two years” to beef up security for users while surfing the web. But since then, Google’s hit the brakes twice already. And every time, it’s been to give the ad industry more prep time for something that’s been surrounded by a lot of ifs, buts, and maybes.’ It was the week’s most read story with a whopping 45,524 page views at the time of this update.

? Ronan Shields spent weeks reporting on the growing speculations that WPP, due to its relatively soft financials, would be ripe for a massive restructuring or private equity-type sell off. As he reported, ‘for some, the figures, which represent continued flat or declining revenue performance, signal the need for a more root-and-branch turnaround approach for the entity that is still thought of as the largest marketing communications agency in the world —?even if its market cap, which nears the $11 billion mark significantly lags rivals such as Publicis Groupe or Omnicom.’ It was the week’s second most-read piece despite being published on Friday morning.

? Kimeko McCoy had a smart analysis piece that looked at how B2B marketers have been increasingly enamored with what is seen as more traditionally B2C brand building. As she reported, this trend is being driven by an ever more fragment and competitive marketplace. ‘The line between business marketing and consumer marketing is beginning to blur. In response, agency execs say they’re encouraging B2B marketers to rewrite the playbook to include a more robust media mix and beef up the brand ethos or narrative with storytelling, by spending more on brand awareness efforts on TikTok or in streaming ads.’

Seb and Krystal Scanlon teamed up on a piece reporting that Chinese-owned online marketplace Temu is giving direct-to-consumer brands a fright with a recent bloom of ad spending that some see as so significant that it is setting the platform ad market too high. As they reported, ‘Marketers … are pointing fingers at Temu, attributing the sharp surge in advertising costs across Meta’s ad platforms to its ad dollars. There’s been a lot of?chatter on X,?LinkedIn discussions?and even some heated conversations on WhatsApp over the past week as these marketers worry about what they see as predatory growth.’ And that they ‘suspect that Temu, one of the largest advertisers on Meta, if not the largest, is driving up ad prices.’

Kimeko had another strong piece last week that looked at how the TiKTok ban signed by President Biden last week could shift brand marketer attention to the fediverse as an alternative place for branding and advertising efforts. As she reported, the ban of the hugely popular platform 'begs the question: In today’s social landscape, do brands ever own their audiences? The answer is no, according to three agency executives who say?it’s time to start exploring contingency plans?that don’t hinge on any of the walled gardens of social media titans like Meta, X or TikTok. Looking for the next frontier, some are pointing toward the fediverse.’

Kayleigh Barber ’s edition of the Digiday weekly podcast featured an interview with Newsweek’s global chief commercial and growth officer Kevin Gentzel who, as she noted in the intro to their conversation, is testing out new audience growth strategies and revenue streams’ to get back to growth in this very uncertain presidential election year. Give a listen here

? Tim Peterson ’s second season of his Future of TV Week video series drops tomorrow Watch for it on Digiday.com

See you next Sunday!