The biggest media and ad stories of 2023
From Meta to retail media to X
First things first:
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Before I get into the biggest stories of 2023, wanted to call out my last podcast episode of 2023, a fun, well-timed interview with Hasbro CMO Jason Bunge. It’s Jason’s job it is to make sure his company’s toys and games end up on kids’ Christmas lists - despite the fact that reaching kids is harder and thornier than ever.
“Thinking about targeting…younger consumers or audiences has these challenges,” he said. One thing that helps, oddly, is “The aging down of screen access continues. So kids today tend to be on their first screen - not television - at age four.”
These kids are tech savvy - and surprisingly ad savvy.
“The best performing, quote unquote, marketing is content that is not viewed as marketing,” Bunge said. “I think a lot of industries kind of have leaned into this concept, whereby it's either user-generated, which tends to be high performing, or it's organic, it's natural, it's authentic, it's not a sponsored ad, etc. That tends to be very viral and far more, far stickier than any kind of pure advertisement.”
I think you’ll enjoy this one. Happy holidays!
In no particular order, here are the ad and media stories of 2023 that really stood out to me as having major implications for the future of these industries.
Mr. Beast just released a video that featured two people being placed in an isolation chamber for 100 days - as part of a competition for $500,000. The video has 78 million views in just four days. He does these kinds of pricey, elaborate stunts more and more. I’m not saying this is the same as what hour-long network TV shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race can pull off over the course of a full season - but Beast is starting to feel like he’s in the neighborhood. Pretty insane.
An underrated story of 2024 - The Return of Meta. Remember just how doomed this company was supposed to be. The blue Facebook app was dying. TikTok was sucking up all the time from Instagram. And most importantly, Apple had broken Meta’s attribution app.
Instead, Meta has killed it during its past few quarters. It may not last, but the recovery has been pretty remarkable.
Other stories:
Retail media is growing faster than everything, including CTV. Insider Intelligence predicts the sector will double by 2027! Brands are addicted to shoppable media - i.e. advertising that can deliver instant, fully trackable results. Which is making the bar higher for every other form of media, and may threaten the very practice of brand marketing.
Ad tech is really consolidating this time, and the post-cookie era may lead to some real overdue fallout. “There are so many headwinds right now on programmatic,” said Lou Paskalis, founder of AJL Advisory, on a recent episode of Pivot. “I think there is going to be a whole lot of skepticism about programmatic going forward.”
Google kept getting in trouble, an no one seemed to care much.
Amazon’s ad business is massive, and its ambitions appear to be boundless. This company will be extremely hard to compete with going foward.
CTV continues to surge, but the biggest potential ad player -Netflix - is moving very slowly. Maybe too slowly.
FASTs are growing like crazy, even though I’m still not sure who watches then.
BuzzFeed’s business crapped out, and it feels like much of what we knew as digital publishing has died.
Everyone is AI, and no one is.
Elon destroyed Twitter, even after hiring Linda Yaccarino. There are all kinds of theories why. An overlooked idea - he’s a legitimately dumb, asshole, out-of-his-mind lunatic.