Digiday Sunday

Welcome to Digiday Sunday, a weekly round up of Digiday's most important - and well-read - stories of the week. It was a busy week of coverage, especially on the platforms beat as the U.S. House of ?Representatives moved on the long simmering concern over TikTok with a vote to ban the immensely popular app if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell to a U.S. entity. Snapchat was also in discussion in that advertisers aren’t exactly wild for its new positioning. How to cope with Google’s Privacy Sandbox remains an industry point of pain and interest as is the viability of attention metrics in a post third party cookie reality for media and marketing. – James Cooper

Krystal Scanlon had the week’s most-read piece that reported that despite Snapchat’s new brand marketing campaign, advertisers are not exactly wowed by the value in Snapchat’s ad offerings. As she reported, ‘A month after Snapchat launched its global riposte to social media with the strap line “Less likes, more Snapchat,” marketers have been left none the wiser as to whether this is going to ladder up into something for its ads business. And it looks like they’re going to be waiting for a while yet… of the five ad execs Digiday spoke to for this article, most of them have yet to hear any pitch.’

Kimeko McCoy , on the eve of the House vote to ban TikTok, checked in with advertisers tapping the massive social platform and found them essentially not bothered by the political intrigue?and posturing around the app – spending full steam ahead it seems. As she reported, ‘Advertisers say they’re keeping close watch, but remain undeterred in shelling out ad dollars for now. The proof is in the numbers. Spending on TikTok was at nearly $1.2 billion in Q4 of 2023, 43% more than the $805 million spent during Q1 of 2023, according to ad intelligence platform MediaRadar.’

Ronan Shields and Seb Joseph , who have been following the industry anxiety caused by Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative as third-party cookies begin their exit, had a nice scoop that ad tech giant Criteo will launch a suite of services designed to make navigating the Sandbox less fraught – and pricey. As they reported, ‘To all the befuddled ad tech vendors scratching their heads over the hefty tech and financial requirements for Google’s dicey cookie alternatives — fret not. Criteo’s got you. While nothing’s set in stone, it seems more like a matter of when, not if, these companies will be able to tap into Criteo’s tech, sparing them the headache of building and financing their own solutions. Todd Parsons, the chief product officer, said as much to Digiday, mentioning that he and his team are working with Google to tackle this issue head-on.’

Michael Burgi also had a nice daily exclusive that reported that attention metrics specialist Adelaide is rolling out a new tool designed to serve holding company media agencies. As he reported, ‘Digiday has learned that Adelaide, one of several attention firms trying to get the, umm, attention of those brands and media agencies, is rolling out a new planning tool and dashboard called Flight Control that’s surprisingly being adopted across a wide array of media agencies, programmatic vendors and other ad-tech firms.?Using Adelaide’s fundamental AU metric, which gauges how much attention an ad delivers in a given placement, Flight Control’s dashboard lets users enter or input three criteria: Outcome type (as in, upper, middle, or lower-funnel outcomes); ad category (CPG, auto, etc.) and channel or media: (display, online video).

Kristina Monllos , Michael Burgi and Seb Joseph had a great team-effort piece looking at how the abrupt and very public clash between long-time media industry deal maker Michael Kassan, MediaLink’s founder and CEO?and now former employer UTA, shows the often dysfunctional and lost-in-translation like relationship between the centers (and individuals) of power in the media and marketing and entertainment realms. As they quoted, Shannon Pruitt, a longtime content executive in marketing and current global chief content and partnership innovation officer at Stagwell’s Brand Performance Network, "It's like a body rejecting the organ — Michael [Kassan]’s model is not a fit for UTA’s more institutional model. The nuance of this particular situation is that you introduced an entirely different business model into what is a Hollywood institution and [talent] agency model that didn’t necessarily fit.”

Tim Peterson 's WTF video piece last week cleverly revisited, and updated, an evergreen WTF on server-side ad insertion. As reported in the intro to the video, ‘Sure, many say that publishers and their ad tech henchmen are doomed to lose any technological arms race, but that’s not going to stop attempts to find a way around ad blockers.’ Check out the video here

Kimeko McCoy edition of the Digiday weekly podcast featured a lively and interesting discussion with Liz Mella, director of marketing for Farmer’s Fridge. As she wrote in the leadup to the chat, ‘With more than 1,000 locations nationwide in airports, hospitals, office buildings, universities and more, Mella said Farmer’s Fridge’s business model has required non-traditional marketing strategies. “We are looking into doing things, like we’re buying media at the exact point of purchase,” she said in a recent interview with Digiday. “But there’s no easy, silver bullet approach to this. It’s really doing a lot of small things to build the amplifier effect of media.” Give a listen here

See you next Sunday!