Innholdsfortegnelse for March 4, 2019 i Adweek

YouTube took additional steps last Wednesday to address a controversy that erupted earlier in February over child-safety issues. The streaming service sent a letter to brands, media buyers and top content creators detailing new initiatives to help protect underage users and prevent ads from running adjacent to offensive or illegal content. The letter states that YouTube will expand previous policies with the ultimate goal of prohibiting comments on all videos featuring “younger minors” and those labeled at-risk of attracting predatory behavior. Additional measures include the accelerated rollout of an updated machine-learning “comments classifier” and a more unforgiving stance regarding creators who have posted inappropriate material related to children. Sources said representatives will be reaching out to advertising partners for one-on-one conversations, but none of the brands that made headlines for…

During the Super Bowl, PepsiCo tripled down on collaborations between musicians and brands—and it paid off. Doritos was the second most-discussed brand on social during the game following its ad starring Chance the Rapper and the Backstreet Boys. Pepsi was the top “share of voice” on social after its Big Game spot featured Cardi B, Lil Jon and Steve Carell aired. And Bubly’s ad with Michael Bublé garnered 8 billion positive media impressions. If done right, pairing musicians and brands like PepsiCo’s Super Bowl ads, including deals beyond just the typical product placement in a music video, could be quite fruitful for both parties. Still, it takes the perfect marriage of personalities and respect for both artist and brand to really nail it—or both could risk losing loyal followers and…

Many brands dedicate entire teams to their newsletter strategies. But with so many brands in the email marketing mix, some consumers are getting dozens of them a day, if not more. So, how can marketers make their email efforts count? New research from Toluna and visual experience platform Movable Ink found that consumers aren’t as saturated with marketing emails as one might expect. Half say they receive between one and five a day. However, that may be because they’re unsubscribing—78.9 percent said they’ve unsubscribed from a brand’s email marketing list. Another slightly alarming takeaway: Over half of consumers (54.4 percent) say they delete at least 50 percent of brand marketing emails they receive without opening them. “A brand marketing email that takes into account a consumer’s preferences and/or past purchases…

It may seem like every day is Amazon Day, but now it’s official—and it is whatever day of the week U.S. Prime members select to be their delivery day. Now featured as a Prime delivery option, Amazon Day is also an effort to reduce the number of shipments from the ecommerce platform: Once members pick their day, they can add items to a weekly order up to two days in advance. The news comes just one day after Etsy announced it can offset all carbon generated from shipping.…

Behind the seemingly blank gaze of every web user staring at a screen lies a wealth of data. Subtle cues—a change in palm sweat levels, a flicker of facial expression, a fleeting sideways glance—can reveal more about what people want from a web experience than they themselves can fully articulate. Or at least that’s the bet consumer-facing brands are increasingly making with the growth of a new set of biometric technologies meant to better quantify the process of building an online user experience. Companies are using focus groups with tools and techniques previously reserved for scientific research like eye-tracking headsets, hand sensors and facial analysis to design and debug ecommerce sites, banking interfaces and other online platforms. “Certainly in the last five years, there’s been an explosion of interest in…

In advance of our inaugural Challenger Brands summit last month, we also launched the Adweek Intelligence Report, a new survey product we are rolling out this year in advance of our key tentpoles to get a better sense of the priorities of the communities we serve with our content and events. The first survey of 200 marketing executives uncovered dozens of interesting insights into both established and challenger brands. One of the clearest signals to ring through the report was that as consumers continue to have more control over their digital destiny in terms of content and advertising, narrative-based marketing—storytelling—will increasingly be the path for brands to take if they want to achieve lasting consumer interest and loyalty. We first caught wind of this shift away from interruptive advertising almost…

John Landgraf has been thinking a lot about HBO in recent months, and not just for the usual competitive reasons. “I have an enormous amount of sympathy for the amount of the time they had to wait while that AT&T deal was closing,” said the FX Networks CEO, referring to the 20 months that passed between when AT&T first publicly disclosed plans to buy Time Warner and the $85 billion merger’s finalization in June 2018. Landgraf now has plenty of empathy for HBO as well, given that FX Networks, along with the rest of 21st Century Fox, is waiting for the Disney-Fox merger—first announced in December 2017—to close, likely sometime in the coming weeks. “We’re right in the same position, which is, we have really strong public guidance, but we…

THE NAME The story goes that founder W.W. Hodkinson saw the name Paramount on a building—possibly in New York—and liked it enough to use it for his movie studio. THE STARS The stars have nothing to do with the glitterati nor does their number signify anything—they’re simply decorative. THE PARENT In 1994, Viacom defeated rival suitor QVC and bought Paramount for $10 billion. Its name has hovered just below the mountain ever since. Hollywood isn’t just an incubator of celebrity culture. It’s also home to some of the most durable brand logos in American capitalism. The celluloid trade calls them title screens, and odds are that most every adult consumer can name them by sight: Warner Brothers’ “WB” shield, Cinderella’s Castle of Disney Pictures fame and, of course, MGM’s lion.…

Austin agency Preacher started as a “family affair” in New York. Co-founders Krystle Loyland, Seth Gaffney and Rob Baird were together at Mother and ended up working on many projects together. The result was a camaraderie that pointed them south to the Texas capital, where they opened the agency in 2014. “We were at a time in our careers where we wanted to find more soul in the business, and we believed that Austin would give us a ton of room to experiment,” says Loyland, who serves as Preacher’s CEO. Today, Preacher has an enviable account roster including high-profile work for Crate and Barrel featuring Reese Witherspoon, Tommy John with Kevin Hart, and an eclectic blend of clients including Beam Suntory, The Container Store and project work for beloved Austin…