Network Meltdown
The chorus of curation critics is growing. But the naysayers might be freaking out unnecessarily, writes Ari Paparo in his Marketecture newsletter.
Curation offers real benefits, mainly because it cuts out resellers, Paparo writes.
It helps publishers fight back against DSP-driven supply-path optimization and makes them less reliant on resellers to tap incremental demand. Data owners can apply their data once to curate deals across multiple DSPs. And buyers get easier implementation of deal IDs, more reach against new data sets and fewer hops in the supply chain.
But Prohaska Consulting’s recent announcement that it’s curating a marketplace of trusted news publishers has energized the critics, argues Paparo. “This broke everyone’s brain,” he writes, because buyers can create inclusion lists of sites in any DSP. So, given that, Prohaska seems like it’s simply dusting off the old ad network approach that skeeves so many ad tech veterans.
“Calling something ‘just an ad network’ is the ad tech version of calling a politician a socialist,” Paparo writes. It sounds bad, but that doesn’t mean it is.
Ad networks enabled smaller sites to thrive, Paparo adds. Meanwhile, DSPs have never come close to offering the same targeting capabilities as ad networks, “and with the loss of signal, it seems increasingly likely they won’t.”
Countering Cord-Cutting
If you can’t beat ’em, advertise on ’em.
Next year, Charter Communications will begin a huge marketing push on various streaming platforms, Bloomberg reports.
The pitch? Charter recently signed deals that will allow it to bundle more than 10 streaming services – including Peacock, Max, Discovery+, Disney+ and Paramount+ – into its existing cable package on Spectrum.
Obviously, the goal is clear: Charter wants to stop losing customers to cord-cutting, and advertising this new bundle directly on the services it would include makes a whole lot of sense.
In some cases, interestingly, some of the deals involve dropping cable channels in favor of their equivalent streaming services. For example, Charter got rid of Freeform and Disney Junior, among other channels, to add Disney+ and ESPN+ last year.
Which begs the question: Is there a possible future where the modern cable package becomes a bundle of streaming services rather than actual broadcast channels? And could that end up causing more consumers to move onto subscription-free FAST options instead?
Illegal Ads
The top attorney for Florida’s Department of Health, John Wilson, resigned after threatening local TV stations with fines and jail time for airing pro-abortion ads, The Miami Herald reports.
Earlier this month, Wilson sent cease-and-desist letters to TV stations that had aired ads supporting an amendment to the Florida state constitution that would expand abortion access.
The letters are now the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the sponsors of the constitutional amendment and the ads promoting it, claiming that the Department of Health violated the group’s First Amendment rights.
The letters concerned an ad in which a woman says Florida’s abortion restrictions prevented her from terminating a pregnancy so she could receive life-saving cancer treatments. The Department of Health accused the ad of being untruthful and of potentially violating a seemingly unrelated law concerning waste disposal, the Herald reports.
At least one TV station stopped airing the ad after receiving the cease-and-desist order.
It remains to be seen how the federal case will play out. But it’s another example of how state governments taking a hard line on abortion can have unexpected consequences for broadcasters and advertisers.
But Wait, There’s More!
An interview with the anonymous creator of @digital_chadvertising, the marketing industry’s most influential memelord. [The Drum]
Penguin Random House adds language to its copyright pages forbidding the use of its books to train AI models. [TechCrunch]
Forget the “holidays” – fall is now its own discrete shopping season, say retailers. [Business Insider]
Google will retire the sitelinks search box in November. [Search Engine Journal]
TikTok fired an intern who reportedly messed with the company’s AI model. [NBC News]
You’re Hired
James P. Gorman will become chairman of Disney’s board next year, and the company will pick a successor to CEO Bob Iger by 2026. [NYT]
