Best of the week: Changemakers, bad ads on Snapchat and the state of influencer marketing
In case you missed it….
We broke new ground this week releasing our first Changemakers list, which honors those modernizing media and marketing. The idea: There are plenty of people you’ve already heard of (and heard of and heard of) that appear on list after list, year after year. We wanted to go beyond that and dive into those making change happen on a daily basis. Editor-in-chief Brian Morrissey outlined what makes a Changemaker here, and discussed our picks with co-executive editors Lucia Moses and Shareen Pathak in a special episode of the Digiday Podcast. Elsewhere this week on Digiday:
Publishers’ treasure hunt for subscribers
The New York Times now has 13 million subscriptions to 50 email newsletters, reported Max Willens. That’s more than twice the number it had three years ago. And though email subscribers are nice, paying subscribers are even better: According to a Times memo, wrote Willens, “newsletter subscribers are twice as likely as regular New York Times readers to become subscribers.”
For the Financial Times, growing subscribers on WhatsApp has been a priority over the last year. The publisher has been broadcasting its stories there as a way of reaching new readers, reports Lucinda Southern. The FT has found that people who access their journalism through WhatsApp are more likely to return to the FT site in the next seven days. It’s a nice traffic driver, too: each post on WhatsApp drives a “comparable amount of traffic” as a post on its main Twitter account, which has 5.7 million followers.
Surprise, surprise: Measurement isn’t crystal clear in influencer marketing
Brands reporter Yuyu Chen released a cheatsheet on the state of influencer marketing. Among the takeaways:
- The number of followers is still the gold standard for a social star’s “influence,” but those with a smaller, focused following sometimes charge more.
- Marketers spent $570 million on influencer marketing on Instagram last year, per eMarketer.
- But agencies struggle with measuring influencer marketing. “This makes it increasingly challenging to answer questions like, how much should I pay the influencers I work with?”
Bad ads flood Snapchat
Snapchat released its self-serve ad platform in time for the NewFronts in early May, leading industry executives to wonder: Can small companies make good video ads that meet Snapchat’s high bar? So far, the answer has been “no,” as low-quality ads are noticeably making their way on to the platform.
Your weekend reading list:
Introducing Digiday Changemakers, honoring those modernizing media and marketing
The New York Times has 13 million subscriptions to 50 email newsletters
Why the Financial Times is going vertical on WhatsApp to drive subscribers
Cheatsheet: The state of influencer marketing
‘The doors have been unlocked’: Snapchat opens the floodgates to bad ads
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Media Briefing: Why Leaf Group spun off its media arm into a standalone company
World of Good's newly appointed CEO Lindsey Abramo spoke with Digiday about her plans to lean into experiential and embrace niche vs. scale.
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‘Not the future’: European publishers remain steadfast in blocking alternative IDs to third-party cookies
Some European publishers believe alternatives to the third-party cookies, probabilistic or deterministic, will do more harm than good to their ads businesses.
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Dentsu’s latest ad report shows slowed growth, driven mostly by inflation
The good news in Dentsu's ad forecast is that there's still growth. The bad news: most of the growth is the result of inflation, while real ad pricing actually dropped a bit.
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SponsoredHow agencies’ relationships with RMNs are continuing to evolve in 2023
Sponsored by Best Buy Ads As retail media networks proliferate, agencies are increasingly identifying RMNs as valuable opportunities for their brand clients as they seek quality audience data, meaningful reporting and insights, and authentic and engaging ad formats and creative. However, there are many options for them to work through as they select RMN partners. […]
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How chef influencer Tue Nguyen works with the BuzzFeed Creator Network
BuzzFeed's Creator Network has been valuable from an audience and production education standpoint, but Nguyen still drives most of her business on her own.
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Dentsu’s new Web3 readiness tool shines light on the tech’s potential to complement AI
Dentsu's Innovation Initiative is launching a web3 readiness index next month — at a time when the industry is obsessed with AI. Could the two technologies actually make a good pair?
