Digiday Sunday
—Digiday The first week in April was certainly a consequential one with President Trump’s sweeping tariff scheme putting the globe on edge, including the media economy which is bracing for the knock-on effects of a drastically diminished stock market and higher prices for consumer goods. Those two factors will most certainly lift scrutiny on brand spending and on, as we reported coming out of Home Depot’s second annual InFronts presentation in Atlanta, the latest snappy marketing acronym ROMO (return on marketing objectives). And we were across the TikTok-in-limbo story and what it means for creators, agencies and marketers. Coca-Cola and Comcast actually hiked their spending on the platform in the lead up to the end of the ban extension tomorrow. Coverage of France’s competition authority fining Apple €150 million ($162 million), the Tesla brand wobble, Threads as a traffic driver and B2B brands tapping their own employees for social content rounded out the weeks’ reporting. – James Cooper
Story highlights
Sam Bradley had a solid end-of-week piece on the impact of Trump’s sweeping tariff roll out that looked at how media agencies are girding themselves for the budget response from clients. As he reported, ‘Though few will cop to cutting media spend or halting campaigns in the short term, marketing execs across America and beyond are spooked about the impacts of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. In response, some media agencies are reconsidering the ways they invest and place media budgets, in particular direct deals with publishers to rein in vendor fees and accelerating outcome-focused strategies like curation. The tariffs crisis is providing new ammunition for marketers and agencies already exploring those strategies.’
Marty Swant reported out a strong story that grew traffic nicely from the week prior that found that media agencies are up in arms about Google reps being overly aggressive with AI pitches to clients. As he reported, ‘Agencies of all sizes say the pressure is intensifying, with reps pushing harder to drive adoption of automated tools like Performance Max and generative AI features. Google Ads sales reps are increasingly contacting agencies’ clients with advice that at times contradicts agency strategies — and in some cases mismanages campaigns — according to a range of media agencies in the U.S. and U.K. Sources. They also say the tactics feel more aggressive and more inappropriate than in the past.’
Sam Bradley had a well-read piece looking at how Amazon is using a loss-leader strategy to compete with its largest DSP rivals The Trade Desk and Google’s DV360 for market share. As he reported, ‘It’s courting media agencies across the industry hoping that more will treat its demand-side platform (DSP) as their go-to programmatic provider. According to 11 media buyers who spoke to Digiday, its pitch to decision-makers emphasizes a refreshed user interface, CTV inventory, and, in select cases, financial incentives. Along the way, it hopes to expand its advertiser base to include more non-endemics.’
Kimeko McCoy had a smart trend piece that reported that smaller retail media networks such as Best Buy Ads and DoorDash are working hard to emerge from the large shadows cast by Amazon and Walmart. As she reported, ‘All signs point to these smaller players heating up the RMN marketplace, but advertisers’ dollars haven’t yet started following. Three of the four agencies Digiday spoke with for this story said the bulk of their clients’ retail media ad spend goes to Amazon and Walmart as opposed to smaller competitors. But “if these small networks can play their data cards right, they can set themselves apart from Walmart and Amazon,” Cindy Meltzer, vp of research and analytics at ad agency Dagger, said in an email to Digiday. “Sometimes niche is more profitable than scale.”
Sara Guaglione had a piece from the week prior that bubbled up into our top five list last week that reported that Meta’s Threads has become a surging source of referral traffic for some publishers. As she reported, ‘Newsweek’s referral traffic from Threads has surged 20-fold since January. Before then it had been just a few thousand daily page views [said Josh Awtry, svp of audience development]. Social made up less than 3% of Newsweek’s traffic mix at this time a year ago. But this month, social referral traffic has more than doubled as a percentage of the overall referral mix — and close to tripled over the past week, according to Awtry.’
Seb Joseph and Ronan Shields worked together on the consequential news that France’s competition authority has fined Apple €150 million ($162 million) for what it deems an antitrust violation disguised as privacy reform. As they reported, ‘At the heart of the matter is Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework, the marquee feature of its privacy push — hailed by some as a principled stand against surveillance capitalism and by others as a velvet-gloved power grab. The decision marks a rare European rebuke of Apple’s dominance and raises larger questions about who truly benefits from the era of so-called privacy.’
Alexander Lee , as the now once again extended TikTok ban extension neared at the end of last week, reported that the platform’s presence on brands' social presence has faded due to all the uncertainty about its future. As he reported, ‘marketers have spent more on other platforms like Instagram and YouTube, both of which outpaced TikTok’s spend in the month following the platform’s Jan. 18 outage…In the months following the January outage, influencer marketing company BENlabs with one snack brand client – whose spending on TikTok had previously accounted for roughly 50 percent of its influencer marketing budget – shifting all of its expenditures to Meta platforms instead.’
Kristina Monllos , pun intended, looked under the hood of Tesla as its largest share owner Elon Musk continues to be a deeply unpopular and polarizing figure given his role in President Donald Trump’s administration and it looks like the ripple effects of that polarization are affecting the Tesla brand. As she reported, last week, ‘some 15% of U.S. adults were considering purchasing a Tesla, down from 20% the week of March 24-30, according to data from Morning Consult. The data firm also noted that “negative buzz” around the brand has been growing since the first week of January, when 25% of respondents to a survey said they had heard or read mainly negative things about Tesla, to now, when 42% said the same.’
Michael Burgi hustled together a nice daily piece on the news last week that agency holding company giant WPP had acquired InfoSum – the data firm once run by its current global CEO of GroupM, Brian Lesser. From the day Lesser took the reins at GroupM last July, it’s been speculated that WPP might purchase the firm — and now it has. The $300 million deal represents a leveling-up on WPP’s part in the data-driven arms race among the agency holding companies. It comes just weeks after Publicis purchased Lotame, and months after Omnicom moved to acquire Interpublic Group, which comes with Acxiom.’
Tim Peterson ’s edition of the Digiday Podcast featured a live on-stage recording during the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado with Lindsay Van Kirk, svp and group gm of D/Cipher at Dotdash Meredith during which she discussed the use of OpendAI to boost contextual ad offerings. Give a listen here
Recommended by LinkedIn
“Quote” of the week
“It’s not enough for brands to just say all the great things they do to attract and retain their workforce. They have to show it, and one of the best ways to do that is by incorporating employee-generated content into their marketing strategy.”
– Jayde I. Powell , a social strategist and B2B LinkedIn creator, on why B2B marketers are banking on their own employees to create content for their brands.
Here are the Digiday + Briefings for the week
—Marketing Briefing: Marketers push for more flexible retail media deals amidst economic uncertainty
—Ad Tech Briefing: Is Google’s curation tool a play for second-mover advantage or an antitrust swerve
See you next Sunday!