A bunch of questions about Apple and Discovery and other summer media things
I don't understand the upfront this year
When I started this substack, I called it “I have some questions,” and then proceed to write a bunch of analytical essays. So today, I’m actually going to just ask a bunch of questions.
1) What does Apple really want out of advertising? We’ve all talked about this a lot - Apple has had numerous fits and starts in the ad business, between launching then killing iAds, acquiring a mobile ad network, outsourcing ads on Apple News to NBC News, doing next to nothing with ads on Apple TVs to hiring and then firing the Facebook book guy.
Now, with all the changes they’re making to not only IDFA but this new Private Relay thing, it seems clear that they want to totally limit/control what goes on with mobile advertising on its devices.
Here are two must-reads on this:
From Benedict Evans, who seems to think Apple might have a massive ad move up its sleeve
From Eric Seufert, who breaks down just how much data and ad control Apple is now exerting.
2)Does Apple just see a nice side business - a cool billion to make its ecosystem tight? Or do they want to be a player? Think how different Facebook and Google view ads, given that it’s like 90% of their revenue. Does Apple even want to get into that neighborhood?
3) How would Tim Cook go bigger in ads without getting destroyed for being a total hypocrite?
4) Would untargeted ads on Apple (or at least, non-personal-data-driven ads) be that good?
5) Who names things at Apple? Remember, this is one of the most iconic brands in the world. We now have:
-IDFA, which sounds like a bureau of the Pentagon that CBS should do a show about
-the SKAdNetwork, which makes me think of Gwen Stefani’s Ska phase in the 1990s
-ATT, which isn’t at all confusing, considering that there is a 150+ year old phone brand called AT&T and this is a mobile thing and AT&T is in the wireless business, which is being impacted by ATT
-Private Relay sounds like someone is having a private relay race, or a sitcom about a goofy army private who also runs cross country
6) The more I think about this, the less sure I am. Why does Discovery+ and HBO+ being under the same roof help either brand? Is that a logical bundle? Is it me or do they not complement each other at all?
7) I read this great Sara Fischer piece in Axios a few weeks ago about the crazy disparity in media vs. tech valuations, and it made me think - with all these crazy mergers and acquisitions in media at the moment, why are none of these giants buying/merging with gaming companies? Are the prices just way too high? Are there no synergies to be found?
As someone pointed out to me on Twitter, at this point it would be more likely to see gaming titans snap up media companies, as now it may be too late for things to happen the other way around. For example, somebody (Viacom? Google?) should have bought Roblox 10 years ago. Disney should have bought Epic Games right after Fortnite hit in 2017 (if this deal were even possible). Now, media companies have no choice but to partner with Fortnite as a distributor.
8)I’ve been reading about what’s going on with this year’s TV upfront (which Covid was supposed to kill?) and I’m scratching my head. What are brands thinking? Brands are expected to spend $20 billion this year, an increase of nearly 8% versus last year.
That’s rather curious to me, given that all we’ve talked about over the past year is that people are streaming and gaming like crazy, not watching linear TV. But then there are these headlines:
From Business Insider: TV networks are trying to jack up prices for longtime advertisers like Procter & Gamble and Unilever as ratings plummet
From Variety: Streaming Deals Key to Upfront Ad Sales as Networks Gun for Price Hikes
This quote from the Variety piece, which mentions that networks want 50% pricing hikes for streaming, really threw me:
“Demand is outpacing the available supply they have to offer. That’s just a fact,” Geoffrey Calabrese, chief investment officer for Omnicom Media Group North America, told Variety. “Ratings have eroded to a point where clients’ desire to find impressions in the linear space is too high.”
Why do brands have this bizarre desire to keep ‘TV money’ in TV? What happened to like 15 years of talk about being ‘video agnostic”?
I know the number get messy, but instead of haggling over the 15 ad impressions available via Peacock or Paramount+ why are buyers not looking at potential TV ad buys right up against TikTok (50 million daily uniques) and Snap (280 million people a day, roughly 40% in the US) and maybe Twitch (millions of concurrent viewers on any given day)? What’s going on here?
9) Have you listened to the podcast I host yet? It’s called Next in Marketing, it’s owned by AppsFlyer, and it’s actually not bad.
10)Why is this newsletter so long?