It’s spring forward time! The snow is finally gone, New York City restaurants are open to 50 percent capacity and vaccinations are dramatically expanding across the world.
March is also the month of St Patrick’s Day, when everyone tells me how Irish they are. Having a quiet drink at home on the balcony was a big change from waiting six deep to get a warm Guinness in a plastic glass.
We had brunch with good friends and their kids this month, and yes, ate indoors. Lots of safety precautions and distancing in place of course. I know my Irish friends and family wish they could do the same at home.
I hope you all are staying positive and optimistic about the remainder of the year and beyond. I know I am.
Feel free to comment, share, and provide topics you would like to see covered. Happy reading!
The latest digital trend of 2021 centers on non-fungible tokens (NFT’s) being snapped up in the millions. The first digital art was auctioned at Christie’s for over $69 million.
This came from artist Michael Winkleman (aka Beeple) whose EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS is a collection of work over 5000 straight days. This is one of the most unique bodies of work to emerge in the history of digital art.
NFT stands for "non-fungible token.” Non-fungible, meaning you can't exchange it for another thing of equal value. An NFT is one of a kind.
What you’re buying is code that manifests as images stored on a blockchain.
Essentially a certificate of authenticity that serves as proof that a certain version of something is uniquely yours.
The token refers to a unit of currency on the blockchain. It's how cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is bought and sold.
The Big Picture - The sale, especially from such an iconic auction house as Christies, has pushed NFT’s into mainstream conversation. The buyers Vignesh Sundaresan and Anand Venkateswaran paid for the artwork (or .jpeg) using a cryptocurrency known as Ether Define, marking the first time that Christie’s has accepted cryptocurrency as payment. The buyers are already heavily invested in the new form of digital collectible represented by NFT’s. What better way to increase your company valuation and to bring NFT’s to the mainstream? To check it out, I put up the waterfall image above for sale as an NFT.
The Athletic and Axios Discuss Merger
US news website Axios is in merger talks with sports media outlet The Athletic. Axios and The Athletic believe selling subscriptions to businesses at a premium rate is a potential growth area. Both companies would continue to operate separately, with each having their own journalists and editorial products.
Axios and The Athletic are reportedly in merger talks to create a larger online publishing company.
The Athletic CEO Alex Mather approached Axios CEO Jim VandeHei last week, sources told the WSJ.
The merged company would likely go public via a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), a route that is cheaper and moves more quickly through the regulatory process than a standard IPO.
The Big Picture: As a huge fan of both brands, this is a smart move for each. The Athletic brings a loyal sports subscription base to the table, while Axios’s news base has been funded by advertising, events and streaming success from their popular HBO series. Both have been disruptors in their areas of influence; The Athletic is known for poaching local sports journalists and Axios pushes short-form journalism that could threaten traditional long-form content. Disruptive companies help to force legacy businesses toward digital transformation and digital culture. This is great news from a consumer perspective, with better products, services and experiences the end result.
Disney's streaming service reaches the 100 million subscriber milestone just 16 months after launch.
Netflix entered the streaming business 13 years ago and took about a decade to hit 100 million streaming members
Disney Plus' growth has far outstripped that of all the new competitors from Apple, HBO, NBCUniversal, Discovery and others.
The company initially projected Disney Plus would reach 60-90 million subscribers five years after launch.
Revised estimates maintain that Disney Plus will have 230-260 million global subscribers by late 2024.
The Big Picture: - Disney Plus raised a lot of eyebrows when it debuted as another streaming competitor to the dominant Netflix. 100m subscribers in record time is certainly one of the success stories of the pandemic. Time will tell if this is long term, or if subscribers will start consolidating their streaming services once events and theatres open up again.
Google Announce Plans to Remove User Tracking
Google has made it clear that after it finishes phasing out third-party cookies over the next year or so, it won't introduce other forms of identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web. The move comes amid increased scrutiny over the way tech giants use consumer data to reinforce their dominance, particularly around personalized advertising.
Many ad tech companies are building workaround solutions so that advertisers can still target people on the web using other types of individual identifier technologies.
Google's announcement is significant in its commitment to avoid such workarounds that would continue to allow tracking at the individual level.
Google isn't making these adjustments solely in response to regulatory pressure, but also to reduce consumer discomfort.
Last month, Google revealed that testing of its solution, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), showed promising results. The system builds a map of user behavior and then looks for matches for "people like you" without ever storing or retrieving individual personal information.
The Big Picture: - For decades, advertisers relied on cookies to track and retarget users across the web (most heavily on computers as opposed to mobile devices). Now, privacy-oriented efforts to phase out cookies by browser makers — Google and rivals Apple and Mozilla — are forcing the digital marketing industry to adjust. This announcement caused one ad tech company - The Trade Desk - to drop 20% of its stock value in two days. Google Chrome alone makes up a large portion of browser audiences and companies and vendors will have to find ways to survive in the new digital landscape.
Newsrooms get creative for long form
From pop-up newsletters to podcasts and short courses to documentaries, newsrooms are getting creative about presenting long-form journalism in the Internet era. Streaming and smartphones have made it easier to turn out big stories in more digestible formats.
Newsrooms are pivoting away from large chunks of text online because the format doesn't suit attention spans on mobile phones.
The average word count for news articles has fallen from about 449 in September 2019 to about 380 in February 2020, according to data from Chartbeat.
The average engaged time on individual news articles has gone up slightly in that time, from 30.29 seconds per article to 31.24 seconds per article.
The average page visit duration in the past year and pages per visit has dropped at -6.2% and -19.4%, respectively. Visits to news pages in the past year were up overall compared to the year prior.
"This suggests that while people are frequenting news sites at higher volumes, they are less engaged with the content, which could indicate interest shifting away from long-form journalism, towards shorter, more digestible formats.”
The Big Picture: - Today, few major internet stories are rolled out without some sort of accompanying audio, video or newsletter format. One notable example: Documentaries. The New York Times,Vox Media, Buzzfeed are licensing their top articles to streaming companies to be used to create documentaries. Long-form journalism is stronger than ever, it's just packaged differently and publishers have to adapt to new mediums and channels to continue to grow and engage their audiences.
JOBS IN MY NETWORK
For anyone qualified and looking for referrals, recommendations, introductions for any of the below roles I am happy to help.
Vice Media - Manager, Strategic Operations
Time.com - Creative and Brand Strategist
Director, Product Personalization - The New York Times
Engineering Director, Commerce - Conde Nast
Senior Manager, Strategic Planning - The Walt Disney Company
If you would like to have your open role(s) featured in next month's newsletter, please get in touch.
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