Adweek

road to nextech

Adweek: How do you think this week’s antitrust hearing will compare to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress a couple years ago? Galloway: Big Tech has negotiated rules and engagement that favor them. It weakens the entire experience, or makes the experience less effective or less revealing. It’s safety in numbers. They shouldn’t have done all four at the same time. To call in all of Big Tech is a bit reductionist—the issues facing Apple are different than the issues facing Facebook. The biggest winners here are [Apple CEO Tim] Cook, [Amazon CEO Jeff] Bezos and [Google parent Alphabet CEO] Sundar [Pichai], because the majority of the ire will be saved for Zuckerberg. This was a mistake. Now, it’s going to be a bit of a food fight. We’re going…

streaming’s long-term strategy

When NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock debuted nationally this month, its most-advertised price point was the tier executives thought would be most appealing to consumers during the pandemic: free. But for users who wanted to lock in a year’s worth of Peacock Premium—which offers additional content beyond the free version—the service offered a 40% discount on an annual payment for Peacock’s ad-supported and ad-free tiers, hoping to entice consumers to commit early to a better deal than the post-launch sticker prices. The offer rewarded customers by giving them a reason to sign up early. It also locked in some customers for the long term, ensuring that the company would get at least some revenue from customers upfront while giving them a reason to stream the platform again and again. After all, they’ve…

black-owned businesses see gains

Washington, D.C.-based attorney Khadijah Robinson spent much of 2019 preparing to launch her passion project, an ecommerce marketplace called Nile that puts “Black women and Black-owned businesses” at the forefront. When she launched Nile in March, she never could have predicted that a pandemic would create a surge in the ecommerce sector; she definitely couldn’t have predicted that the Black Lives Matter movement in June, spurred by the police killing of George Floyd, would drive traffic to her new website. In March, Nile saw 1,600 unique visitors; in June, that number increased to 19,000. “The growth was exponential,” Robinson said, adding that she spent much of July working 21-hour days and is considering retiring from the legal profession to run Nile full time. The renewed awareness and protests around racial injustice had an…

what consumers want from brands

Consumers want to see more economic opportunities for the Black community. In a July survey from GlobalWebIndex, consumers were asked how brands should best respond to the Black Lives Matter movement. Here’s what U.S. consumers in three age groups said brands should do in order to promote racial equality: 1 Review hiring policies Gen Z and millennials said this was the most important step (50%), along with 46% of boomers and 43% of Gen X. 2 Ensure diversity in management teams 46% of boomers and Gen Z/millennials, along with 44% of Gen X made this the second most popular step for brands to take. 3 Ensure diversity in supply chain 46% of Gen Z and millennials want to see brands use more diverse suppliers while 38% of boomers and 37% of Gen X…

industry braces for apple’s ios 14

Some feared Apple would revoke its identifier for advertisers (IDFA) when it announced details of its upcoming iOS 14 rollout last month, which is the primary means for advertisers to target and track the effectiveness of their ads on iOS devices. Such a move would have replicated the rollout of intelligent tracking prevention, which has taken place in its Safari browser in recent years and slowly hurt publishers. Though the announcement fell short of these earlier fears, Apple nonetheless threw the $45 billion in-app advertising economy a curveball. Apple’s pending iOS 14 update will require publishers (app developers) to seek consent from device users in order for third parties (app monetization partners) to access data. This in effect makes IDFA an opt-in feature for users, and advertisers will no longer be able…

coffee comes home

People tend to drink coffee where they are, which lately hasn’t been on campus, in the office or meeting friends at local cafes. They’ve been home. This shift in location has brought about a change in how consumers get their daily dose of caffeine. Dunkin’s and Starbucks’ physical stores have suffered, but their lines of at-home coffee products have not. From March through June, U.S. retail sales of packaged coffee were up 17.9% compared to the same period last year, according to Nielsen. With no quick-and-tidy end to the pandemic in sight, coffee brands have been embracing the idea that a greater number of consumers will be brewing their own coffee at home for the foreseeable future. And they’ve adjusted strategies accordingly. The J.M. Smucker Co., for instance, which makes, markets and sells…