Daily August 17

If media employees have proven to their bosses over the last 18 months that they can be productive while working from home, why are they being required to come back into the office this fall? That’s a question employees individually and unions collectively are posing — and an angle they have used to push back against management’s demands that employees work from the office at least a few days a week. Read more below.

• Bosses are telling employees how well they are doing working from home. Staff are now asking: if that’s true, why are we being required to return to the office?
• If the Metaverse is to be a virtual reflection of the real world, its demographics must reflect those of the real world as well.
• A number of agencies and marketing organizations are taking a much more flexible approach as they rethink what office culture and structure mean to them. More in this week’s Digiday+ Marketing Briefing.
• Facing a Great Resignation, hiring managers are working overtime to attract and retain workers and are finding that providing childcare is a potent selling point.
• In this week’s Digiday Podcast, co-hosts Kayleigh Barber and Tim Peterson talk about everything from how the delta variant is affecting the status of companies’ office return and in-person event plans to the state of publishers’ advertising, subscription and commerce businesses.
• More and more publishers are giving affiliate commerce a try for the first time amid the pandemic, according to Digiday+ research.
• An M&A deal with Dennis Publishing allows Future a way to broaden its base of consumer data, while giving it a foothold in new audience categories.