LiveRamp Widens Agency Pitch; Media Biz Models Diverge

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Agencies Are People Too

LiveRamp will let agencies make its IdentityLink onboarding solution more widely available to marketing services firms, AdAge reports. Launched last year, IdentityLink allows customers – historically brands – to resolve a single identity across different online and offline touch points. “Agencies do three things: they plan, they buy and they measure media,” says Nikhil Dixit, VP of agencies and publishers at LiveRamp. “At LiveRamp, we have been really good at the buy portion, but we haven’t had an offering to engage with agencies across all three core competencies.” Read more.

Off The Shelf

Private-label brands: an old grocery chain idea that’s gaining new steam. In its first year on shelves, Target private-label kids clothing company Cat & Jack almost matched Lululemon with $2 billion in sales. And Walmart’s Jet.com and Amazon are both aggressively expanding private-label CPG and grocery brands, Sarah Halzack writes for Bloomberg. Traditional CPGs should take warning: “This could change retailers’ willingness to give them prime shelf space or digital real estate for certain items, and they need to make sure they can play effective defense.” More. Related in AdExchanger: Amazon Benefits As CPGs Trim Digital Dollars.

Subs Vs. Ads

New research from Digital Content Next describes a clear bifurcation of media business models. For broadcaster sites and digital media startups, “it’s about getting mass advertising for a targeted audience,” says Rande Price, director of research for the news industry trade group. But these players are largely not investing in subscription revenue or in sponsored content, which is expensive to produce. Print pubs, on the other hand, “have historically built their businesses around attracting and retaining subscribers,” and that remains the focus. But high churn rates – 30% of subscribers don’t renew – threaten to undercut the big marketing investments. More at The Wall Street Journal.

Catch A Buzz

In a test, BuzzFeed has begun inserting a new “Stories Digest” into its mobile app product for about 6% of users. As its name indicates, the new content mimics the stories format popularized by Snapchat and adopted by Facebookagram. “We’ve really leaned into distribution over the years,” BuzzFeed senior product manager Andrew Paulus tells Max Willens at Digiday. “But we want the app to be the best place for users to consume the best content.” More.