Blog: digital advertising

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Instagram and the download-delete cycle: a cultural shift for social platforms

Cover image for Instagram and the download-delete cycle: a cultural shift for social platforms
Hanna Kahlert
Forget the tech-centric sci-fi future promised by the early 2000’s; the new aspiration is going offline. Analogue is the new ‘cool’, and it is not just about nostalgia. Audiences are searching for authenticity, connection, novelty, experience, and tangible ownership of the things they love, all of which are scarce now in an oversaturated digital environment .
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Not everyone can be a winner in the FAST gold rush

Cover image for Not everyone can be a winner in the FAST gold rush
Ben Woods
Video streaming executives searching for relief from the high cost of acquiring new subscribers have found a saviour – and it looks a lot like linear TV. Free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) is becoming a necessity for video services whose strategy of spending big on exclusive content to attract subscribers is being tested by the higher cost of capital and the squeeze on household spending power.
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Instagram drops the Like and WhatsApp defends privacy in India: Facebook’s PR reinvention

Cover image for Instagram drops the Like and WhatsApp defends privacy in India: Facebook’s PR reinvention
Hanna Kahlert
Facebook is now old enough that there are teenagers on it that are younger than it is. In the time that it has been around, it has reinvented social media . It has also had to do some reinventing of itself, adding to its portfolio image-sharing app Instagram and end-to-end encrypted messaging service WhatsApp to form a powerful trifecta dominating mainstream digital socialisation.
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Quick Take: Twitch and Amazon’s Advertising Strategy  

Zach Fuller
It is the fastest growing segment of the business and yet until recently no one seems to have addressed the extent to which Amazon’s advertising is becoming an increasing force in ad land. Now that’s its online gaming streaming platform Twitch is targeting over $1 billion in annually in advertising, will the next two years see the e-commerce and cloud giant meaningfully break the digital ad duopoly held by Alphabet and Facebook? Firstly, some figures: Amazon’s advertising business could deliver as much as $8/9 billion USD for 2018.
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The Digital Advertising Contest Between Google And Facebook Is Intensifying

Zach Fuller
Brace yourselves for a stats-centric blog. Having gone through this week’s annual reports from big tech, there have been some important developments in the digital advertising space. These of course hold significant implications for content monetisation, as whilst subscriptions remain the core driver of growth, ad-supported content is a vital component of overall revenue.
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Snapchat’s Re-Design Is Likely Too Little Too Late

Zach Fuller
Having promised a ‘whole new Snapchat’, it appears the app’s mooted re-design is not the revolution Evan Spiegel proposed during his company’s Q3 earnings call. The company’s founder stated that: “While blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends has been an interesting Internet experiment, it has also produced some strange side-effects (like fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves.
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Quick Take: Big Tech’s Q3 Earnings Have Big Implications for Media

Zach Fuller
With US listed public companies’ quarterly earnings currently being drip-fed to Wall Street, here are two of the implications for Media and Advertising entities from Tech’s Big Four Q3 earnings: Amazon’s Media Presence is Continuing to Grow: While Amazon did not break out its specific numbers around the nascent advertising and media group aspects of its business, its revenue defined as other, is alongside its emerging subscription revenue (Prime, Amazon Video etc), is the fastest growing element of the Amazon ecosystem.
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