Digiday Sunday
Digiday: A very strong week for traffic as the industry heads into the extra short week of July 4th. A diverse fan of stories outperformed our week-over-week and year over-year total views and visitor stats by significant double digits. A deep analysis of what the slow, but inexorable, death of Oracle’s advertising business means for the ad tech industry, its executive ranks and hundreds of millions of digital marketing dollars, rocketed readership. On the gaming beat, a one-two coverage punch of the controversy surrounding now disgraced streaming industry luminary Dr Disrespect combined drew almost 15K page views by week’s end. Also clicking nicely with readers was a piece that looked at how social media platforms are pivoting to distance themselves from the traditional ‘social media’ label as the media and marketing landscape continues its fragmentation unabated. — James Cooper
Story highlights
Ronan Shields and Seb Joseph expertly broke down the fading away of Oracle's once vaunted, and valuable, advertising business and what it means for an ad tech industry in perpetual flux. As they reported, ‘The scramble to hoover up the people left behind by Oracle’s ad business shows just how fed up the tech giant’s bosses had become with a division that raked in $2 billion only two years ago; they’d rather save on taxes by shutting it down than make a bit of money from selling it. Emphasis on “bit,” because Oracle’s ad business, neglected for years, isn’t exactly in shape to thrive under new ownership.’ It was the week’s most-read story.
Alexander Lee, across two stories, hopped on the unseemly controversy surrounding famed YouTube steamer Dr Disrespect (Guy Beahm) and what it signals to the gaming industry in general – his conduct seemed to be an open secret – and sponsors in specific. As he reported, ‘following accusations of inappropriate contact with a minor, the downfall of prominent livestreamer Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm has rocked the gaming world. Some sponsors and business partners have already cut ties with the embattled creator — and as more evidence of his misconduct comes out of the woodwork, this trickle is poised to become a deluge.’
Kimeko McCoy pulled together a smart news analysis of how the social media platforms are attempting to shift away from the social media moniker as marketing evolves out from the sector’s original promise and potential. As she reported, ‘the landscape looks different even now — the channels are fragmented, making reach less defined. Misinformation has also entered the chat and some of these social media channels have had to reckon with how their feeds foster bad behavior. The platforms have also had to answer some difficult questions: How do these channels weigh the responsibility of being a publisher, without taking credit for being so? How do these channels monitor the conversations in the rooms that they created?’
Kayleigh Barber 's edition of Digiday’s weekly podcast featured a discussion with Rob Rakowitz, co-founder and initiative lead at GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, on the lack of standards around measuring emissions. As she wrote in her intro to the chat, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and Ad Net Zero aimed to remedy those concerns with its Global Media Sustainability Framework, launched ahead of the Cannes Lions Festival earlier this month. Give a listen here
Tim Peterson returned with his weekly WTF video series last week with a great explainer breakdown of the Private Aggregation API in Google’s Privacy Sandbox. As he wrote in his intro, ‘Paired with Privacy Sandbox’s Shared Storage proposal, the Private Aggregation API stands to provide a means for marketers to receive reports on the audiences served their ads across sites while withholding individual-level reporting.' Check out the video here
Here are the Digiday + Briefings for the week
—Marketing Briefing: Brands set to focus oninfluencer and OOH activity at Wimbledon
—Future of TV Briefing: Why digital advertisersneed bridge metrics for streaming
—Media Briefing: Publishers pitch women’ssports as advertiser interest grows
—Research Briefing: Amazon faces retail media competition from Walmart and Target
See you next Sunday!