TOP DIGITAL STATS:   AdWeek hasn’t done a roundup of the top digital stats in a few weeks (summer vaca?), so yesterday’s list feels like sort of a catch up of the past few weeks.  Pandora made the list with Edison’s study of music consumption on Amazon Echo devices.  As if we needed any stats to prove ice cream’s consumption surge during the summer months, you’re covered in the Bonus Stat section.  And I’m not really sure what’s going on with the 8-yo boy drag queen video in #3, but 28M people have watched it.  Somebody must have a ton of time on their hands!  Enjoy this week’s list.

BRANDS COME BACK TO YOUTUBE:  After a six month boycott of YouTube Verizon is beginning to advertise on the platform again.  Remember how the initial issue came about – brands became aware of (and then outraged by) the fact that they had no control over video content their ads were running adjacent to.  So an innocent Verizon ad could run before a video from a hate group or even ISIS terrorist propaganda.  So brands pulled off YouTube immediately to do damage control and pressure Google (YT’s owner) to clean up its game.  Since then Google has implemented more stringent screening measures for what content makes it’s on their video platform, and more importantly allow 3^rd party tracking for the first time.  These moves were enough to convince Verizon (and others) to cautiously return.  In Verizon’s case they’ll be using IAS’s new Ad Analytics Tracker to keep YouTube honest.  Don’t be surprised if content verification for OLV becomes a standard ask of all publishers, even if they never had an issue with objectionable content.

MY CRAP-O-METER JUST WENT OFF:  Finally today, I need to unload on Inside Radio and their cohorts at Westwood One (both owned by broadcast radio operators), for publishing yet another BS hit piece about Pandora.  The main point of today’s article in Inside Radio is that Pandora’s “limited reach” means marketers will max out on who hears their message and then start to over saturate P’s audience with too much frequency.  Here are my two biggest problems with the article.  First, WW1 is comparing Radio’s reach and frequency to Pandora as if Radio is one entity.  But Radio’s stats are compiled from the aggregate of 11,341 commercial radio stations across the country.  No advertiser ever buys every station all at once, so to tout the collective reach as something brands can buy is misleading.  In fact, it would be interesting to see how individual stations’ reach/frequency stack up to P in any given market, instead of comparing it to the entire Radio universe.  And second, WW1’s assertion that “Radio’s grows frequency gradually”, even as brands spend up to 250 GRPs per week is nonsense.  Are any brands besides iHeart running 250 GRPs in a week anymore?  Of course not – so don’t try to prove your point with hyperbole.  Even if a brand did buy a heavy radio schedule in a given market, stations can’t de-duplicate the number of times the same ad is being heard across the different stations.  So without that data point WWI has to average the frequency between each station in the market, instead of aggregating what listeners are actually hearing.  As you can tell, I could go on for days about the kaka in this piece.  I just hope brands don’t get sucked in to Radio’s fallacy of reach, and have full transparency on what they’re running on individual stations.

Have a great Wednesday guys!