Fix/Lite on LinkedIn - February 21
Merchant
In this week's Merchant Deep Dive we looked at the unit economics of Fast Last Mile firm Jokr. The flexibility of their model is a contrast to the incumbents as this piece on Ocado shows - asking Will Ocado ever be profitable? And the head of Tesco online operations details how his team added the capacity to serve an additional 1m customers - they went from 650k online orders a week to 1.6m;
We also shared the brand new Shopify report on The Future of Commerce in 2022?- if you didn't get a chance take a look now. I think it's a must read.
Adtech Perfect Storm
Google took us back to turbulent times with their announcements that they will bring the Privacy Sandbox to Android. But they're not going to action anything for 2 years, so it's something of a reprise for the industry
Their announcement stresses their desire to collaborate with the industry and to work closely with regulators, making their ambition clear;
Meta welcomed the announcement, with the WSJ noting;
The Mobile Dev Memo take on this is worth reading too as Eric considers the tech in more detail.
There is a lot of smart people trying to figure this out - motivated by the vast amounts of money that ads generate for the major players - but it is complicated. One example is the Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA) I mentioned a few weeks ago. One of the engineers behind this initiative pointed out the barriers;
Another disruption came from The Trade Desk who announced the launch of Open Path; essentially disintermediating SSPs and forging direct connections with previous premium publishers. As The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green puts it,
The biggest victim of this is probably Google, so it's an interesting strategic move and the timing was slightly unusual as it was announced just a day or so before the TTD results. The results were pretty good beating expectations but their stock still fell based on sentiment around the Google announcement, before bouncing back.
Digiday speculates that Agencies are likely to be unhappy about this move and an exec from Cround shares his thinking. We should watch for reactions across the industry as everyone processes this move. Share your thoughts in our adtech Guild
Google have a new report - produced with Forrester - and share 4 steps to future-proof your programmatic strategy
And I was quoted in a good piece on what Apple may announce at their upcoming developer event - I think we will soon see them step up with a more ambitious ad product
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NewTV
This piece on the relentless rise of Smart TVs got lots of traction when we shared it a couple of weeks ago. But whilst prospects for dongles may look less assured Google are doubling down on their Chromecast business, announcing lots of new content through an improved User Interface. Could Google be the conduit for lots of FAST (free, ad-supported streaming television) channels to get prominence in newTV? Samsung has shown how effective this can be and Roku and more are now offering a wider choice.
Samsung announced a new partnership this week. ITV will distribute 2 new channels through the Samsung TV Plus; Storylands - a brand new channel set to become the home for the best European drama, produced by labels which are part of ITV Studios and a dedicated Hell's Kitchen channel. The partnerships starts with the UK and will expand to key European markets
The Stanley Tucci show I have been going on about has finally been picked up by another broadcaster - the BBC will show it later this month.?
The biggest issue facing the ad business is the switch of ad money from Linear into Streaming. Two things need to happen to enable this inevitable switch (inevitable because money always follows audience)
First we need more advertising inventory in streaming - so the FAST channels need to evolve to attract more audience. And the ad experience needs to be at least as good as the typical linear one currently.
Second, the agency model that still dominates TV needs to evolve. The experience and expertise of the linear TV buying cohort is needed to help brands manage the transition. And so too is the hands on nous of those buying online video, where the current programmatic approach is evolving already. But whilst these two camps coexist within most Agencies, they are often not collaborating as much as they could. In our deep dive next week we will look at this issue in more detail.
Web3
I think we are all watching the fireworks of web3 and trying to work out what has legs. Much of the flashy stuff seeks to dazzle us but so much is smoke and mirrors. The FT points out how niche it still is; When you count users instead of dollars, the NFT world is tiny. One of the smaller NFT marketplace has suspended most sales, citing 'rampant' fakes and plagiarism.
A long Vice piece centred on the Bored Ape backstory and originators documents a lot of the issues around web 3. But is it really a battle for the soul of the internet?
There are people looking to translate the interminable jargon into English to help people understand the opportunity and broaden the interest beyond the get rich quick schemes and the quasi religious fervour that surrounds web3.
Goldman Sachs have a good report on Framing the Future of Web 3.0 and our friends at Vida are helping the Crypto Curious understand they key themes
I look at this through the lens of marketing and I think it’s clear there are some real opportunities. But lots of the stuff we are seeing from brands is naive. Brands need to see the Big Picture and - just like with GAFA - those who really understand the opportunities, and act on them, will gain real competitive advantage.
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