Light reading for your post-Cannes vacation

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, a host of influential media and technology companies, including Amazon, Buzzfeed, Comcast, Conde Nast, Disney, Live Nation, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery, have pledged to reimburse employees in abortion-restricted states for travel expenses associated with ending a pregnancy (disclosure: my employer has also made such a pledge). I struggle with this trend. Make no mistake, any effort to widen access to safe abortions is very laudable! But it’s also a disheartening reminder of how much our country continues to privatize what so many would consider universal rights. Where you work has long determined things that have nothing to do with work, like how long you can spend with your baby after childbirth or the quality of healthcare you have access to. Now, that list also includes your ability to choose to end a pregnancy. A year ago, I wrote an entry to this newsletter, “Worshiping False Idols”, critiquing America’s increasing reliance on the corporation as the primary vehicle to effect social change. I stand by that concern, although I also appreciate the pragmatist's counterargument: during an age of failing institutions, what other choice do we have?

News Feed

Digital ad tech + climate change (link)

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported on the growing focus within advertising to quantify and reduce the energy impact associated with online advertising, which a 2018 report estimated to account for 1% of global energy consumption. An interesting consequence of living in today’s age of widespread recognition of the climate crisis is we are starting to scrutinize a much broader set of economic activities than the areas traditionally considered the core culprits of carbon emissions. So, yes, of course, we need to drive electric cars and shift to renewables and eat less meat, but it seems we may also need to conduct fewer real-time auctions in our digital ad campaigns.

The ad tech climate awareness follows similar analyses in other realms of media. In 2019 musicology professor Kyle Devine published a book highlighting how, despite the dematerialization of recorded music from vinyl and CDs to streaming, energy consumption associated with the sector has actually risen. Last year Seth Wynes, a postdoc at Concordia University, published a paper illustrating how scheduling changes designed to reduce the spread of Covid during the 2020 pro sports seasons – i.e. scheduling more games between teams in the same regions, increasing the number of back-to-back contests between the same teams and canceling overseas games – served to reduce emissions by 26% per game across the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL.

As for advertising, contextual targeting vendors may try to seize on the movement as another reason to reconsider addressable advertising (it also may be time to retire the aerial advertising you're sure to see at the beach this summer). But it’s unlikely that behavior will change, so expect more demand for carbon offsets from ad tech vendors, agencies and clients.

Netflix + advertising (link)

Netflix has finally capitulated on its religious opposition to advertising and announced plans to launch an ad-supported tier of its service, and now it is reportedly speaking with several prospective partners, including Comcast, Google and Roku, about providing sales and technology support. This news is not surprising; I wrote two years ago why Netflix’s purported rationale for remaining ad-free didn’t hold up to close scrutiny, and by partnering initially Netflix will be able to bring an ad-supported product to market more quickly than it could on its own. However, expect Netflix to fully insource this capability over time, not just because of its long record of preferring vertical integration; in-house sales and proprietary ad tech allow publishers to capture a greater share of media buys and facilitate scaling of the ad format innovation that is sure to be a priority of a pioneering product organization like Netflix.

Roku + Walmart (link)

A new partnership between Roku and Walmart will allow Roku viewers to buy Walmart items with a few clicks of a Roku remote via shoppable ads. When it comes to linking connected TV investment with business outcomes, Roku has been more aggressive than any other media owner – including, ironically, Amazon, whose proprietary video + commerce offering makes it uniquely positioned to “close the loop” for advertisers. But while early efforts with Kroger (announced June 2020) and Shopify (announced September 2021) have focused on better attribution for traditional video ads – i.e. tracking whether those exposed to Roku ads made purchases on Shopify merchant stores or with Kroger – this new partnership represents an attempt to collapse the marketing funnel altogether, with commerce integrated directly into the viewing experience. There remains a big open question as to whether these consumer behaviors are compatible, but Roku is betting that by reducing friction (i.e. vaulted credit card, proprietary remote) it can unlock pent up demand.

Spotify + audiobooks (link)

Three years ago, when it announced two major podcast acquisitions, Spotify repositioned itself as an all-purpose audio platform, rather than merely a music platform. But what it left unsaid then was just how broad its definition of audio might be. Mindfulness and meditation? Mostly leaving that to Calm and Headspace for now. Live social content? Tried, pivoted, and, like its inspiration Clubhouse, still struggling to establish sustained consumer interest. Instead, Spotify has now set its sights on the audiobook market, which it estimates will exceed $15 billion in 2027. The company dedicated time at a recent investor day to unveil plans, including the close of its acquisition of Findaway, which offers a catalog of titles as well as tools to make it easy for independent authors to publish their audiobooks. The latter piece is key – the audiobook market, like music, is dominated by a small group of giant publishers, which limits margin headroom for a distribution platform (particularly a new entrant looking to compete with market leaders Amazon and Apple). Spotify is betting that by democratizing the content publishing process (something Amazon’s Audible has also tried to do), it can shift the mix of consumption toward longer-tail independent audiobooks where it can capture better economics.

Semafor + journalist talent (link)

Former Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and former Buzzfeed News editor and New York Times media critic Ben Smith shared more details last week about their forthcoming digital news venture, Semafor, including $25 million in funding and key early hires. Semafor is no doubt receiving a disproportionate volume of coverage for a digital publisher that has not even launched – death, taxes and New York media navel-gazing – but what I’m watching is the relationship it cultivates with its journalist talent. The internet has unbundled the reporter from the publisher, so how, in the age of Substack, do you lure top reporting talent to build a media brand that, in success, will inevitably commoditize them? The answer seems to be in something more akin to a journalist collective than a traditional news brand, with Semafor looking like the latest entry in a model that includes other notable newsletter-centric startups of recent vintage, such as Axios and Puck. The Times reported it aims “to have a different relationship with its reporters than other newsrooms, including by ensuring that journalists receive ‘all or most’ of the financial upside of their intellectual property, such as book deals or movie rights.” You may no longer need a publisher to reach and monetize your audience, but the independent operator model is a lonely path, requires time spent on non-core functions like marketing, and presents more downside risk along with its greater upside potential. As a result, we’re seeing a new equilibrium emerge, with talent-friendly publishers adapting to elevate their constellations of journalist stars.

Listenables and Lookables

• Watch: "The Bear" on Hulu. It's a wonder, given today's glut of reality/competition/documentary food content, how little fiction fare the category has produced. Finally, we now have The Bear, a frenetic dramedy set in a Chicago sandwich shop. You could down all eight episodes in one gulp.
• Read: How Animals Perceive the World. I haven't yet read Ed Yong's new book, An Immense World, but I can't wait to after reading this excerpt in The Atlantic. Yong's reporting can be very bleak – in addition to the energy consumption of ad tech, we may also need to rethink the challenges sports stadium lights impose on migrating birds – but it is deeply rewarding to disrupt one's anthropocentric world view, which is a prerequisite to addressing the issues Yong chronicles.
• Listen: "All The Small Things" by Blink-182. Wait, what? Why is this punk pop anthem from 1999 showing up here? I would've wondered the same thing before I learned about the home-ice ritual of the newly crowned Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche.

Note: This is the 12th edition of the?Strange Bedfellows?newsletter. You can find the others and a link to subscribe?here.?If you enjoy it, please consider sharing it with someone you know. You can find more of my writing, including a recent viewpoint on the winning playbook for connected TV advertising, at medialink.com.