Investment is (slowly) trickling back into ad tech
recent activity is a stark contrast to the conservatism of investors in 2023, with speculation centering upon the AI and CTV sectors.
AI is not a surprise, slap that label on anything and you’ll attract investment right now.
CTV is the heir apparent to the traditional TV advertising throne, even if YouTube and other creator-content based platforms will carve a sizable slice of that pie for themselves.
What happens when the usual forms of human-computer interface get disrupted?
OpenAI is working on AI agents that take over your mouse and keyboard, performing the tasks in real time.
- One would complete complex tasks on your device like creating a spreadsheet from a document of information or filling out your tax forms.
- The second agent would take on web-based tasks like curating data from different sites (similar to Perplexity or Arc Browser), booking flights and hotels, or even building travel itineraries.
The groundwork has been laid, AI could be the accelerant.
via The Future Party
Wendy’s looking to test surge pricing at restaurants
The Amazonification of physical retail.
I’m interested to see how this goes. I don’t think it’ll be received well by consumers. I don’t think people want to be surprised by their burger price while ordering.
This is maybe not the thing to say in a time of inflation when It’s Been 30 Years Since Food Ate Up This Much of Your Income:
We’ve got to reach the consumer where they are, so we’re advertising about cereal for dinner. If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do, that’s going to be much more affordable.
It does not matter if this is factually accurate or not, your consumer’s aren’t pleased that this is where they’re at. And Frosted Flakes don’t exactly align with the surging wellness trend.
after the spike in online shopping ignited by the 2020 Covid quarantine, the e-commerce share of all retail sales had shrunk to less than 15% in the third quarter of 2023. Over the past four years, the e-commerce slice of retail industry revenue has gained by only 0.5%.
But, as this Forbes piece, ecommerce is becoming more and more enmeshed in the full retail ecosystem. It is no longer siloed off.
Apps power in-store shopping. In-store returns trigger on-site purchases. Ecommerce discovery turns into in-store purchases.
Just like most things digital these days, it’s omnichannel.
According to the Dotdash Meredith CEO:
“if you cannot show performance, you are dead.” The evolution of advertising and how people interact with those ads has caused a shift to bottom-up priorities, instead of top-down.
Spotify has big goals for its ad product
The long-term aspiration, as stated by CEO Daniel Ek, is for advertising to generate 20% of the company’s revenue. The longer-term goal on top of that, according to Couchman, is reaching $10 billion in ad sales.
Some quotes from Dave Gerhardt on the Marketing Against The Grain podcast:
You say small business, mid market, and enterprise, internal. External that often means nothing.
The way you speak about what you do matters. Use your customer’s language, not your internal business speak.
People buy products when they say, “oh, interesting, this company looks like mine, I’m going to use that product.”
This is making the case for case studies.
Or, as Seth Godin says: People like us do things like this.
From a great Dan Oshinsky LinkedIn post on email metrics:
What does a good click-to-open metric look like? In 2023, ConvertKit said the average CTOR was 9.2%, while Mailerlite said their average was 8.9%. If you’re beating those numbers, that’s a very positive sign!
Click-to-open is an underrated metric.