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Social platforms like TikTok and YouTube — which hates to be called a social platform, but I digress — are no longer the sole domains for creators. Streaming services have been loading up on creator-led programming, like Hulu with “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
The reality show stars a set of TikTok creators who could have just as easily...
CTV ad spend is up. CPMs? Not so much.
Midway through the year, buyers and sellers say CPMs are sliding. Depending on who you ask, they’re down anywhere between 10% to over 30% year over year. The reasons vary but the story is largely the same: more inventory, more buyers looking for performance and a growing appetite for efficiency over exclusivity.
“We’ve seen CPMs drop year over year,”...
TV ad buying is increasingly driven by ad tech, as shown by activity during the 2025 upfront negotiations, where programmatic, CTV, and data-fueled pitches took center stage. This theme continued last week at the media industry’s flagship conference, Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, with a slew of announcements at the glitzy affair underlining this shift in the sands.
Related Insights...
LGBTQ+-focused publishers faced a tougher-than-usual Pride month this June, as ad dollars failed to materialize.
Some saw fewer new advertisers and lower ad spend this Pride month compared to last year.
Execs at four LGBTQ+-focused publishers Digiday spoke to attributed the slowdowns and pullbacks to the current social and political climate. Continue reading this article on digiday.com....
Here and gone before you know it, here’s what you might have missed from Cannes Lions 2025 across our coverage areas. A fun thing: compare the themes to how they were discussed last year.
Media
DoubleVerify casts itself as news ally in Cannes — as scrutiny mounts.
Marketing
Marketers demanded actual, tangible case studies of AI in efficient meetings.Continue reading this article on...
Spotify’s video podcast partner program is gaining traction with independent podcast creators drawn to its direct payouts — but major podcast networks remain hesitant, citing the lack of dynamic ad support for subscriber-only content.
Spotify launched its Partner Program in January, giving creators their first opportunity to share video content, and receive a cut of its ad and premium...
Media Buying Briefing: What Dentsu’s synthetic audiences deal reveals about future of media planning
Much of the chatter at Cannes Lions last week (heard and overheard by my colleagues) fixated on AI’s ability to generate content faster or reduce production costs.
That’s all well and good, but timesheet and dollar savings don’t tell the whole story when it comes to the practical applications of AI already taking hold within the ad industry, especially within media planning and buying. This is...
Digital ad spend is plateauing, with growth rates slowing considerably between now and 2028, especially when compared to the boom times such as the immediate post-pandemic era.
EMarketer research further predicted the days of double-digit growth rates will soon be over with year-on-year growth to be just 8.7% in 2028 — compared that to the market conditions of 10 years earlier when growth was...
When podcast networks started using AI to translate shows into other languages last year, media buyers were skeptical. Voices ranged from awkwardly robotic to wildly inaccurate.
The tech has come a long way since then — which is why iHeartMedia chose to take its time. More than a year after iHeartMedia execs told Digiday they planned to debut a handful of translated podcasts to grow their...
AI was the buzzword of the week at Cannes Lions but platforms behind it were largely out of the public eye. CMOs suspect that won’t be the case for long.
Perplexity, ChatGPT and others may be holding off on the full-blown ad pitch but the economics say that will shift. GPUs, cloud computing, data pipelines, top-tier engineers — it’s a high-burn business. At some point, the math forces the...