Monday’s Musings . . .

October 2, 2017Uncategorizedgmtartaglia@aol.com

BEST OF ADVERTISING WEEK: With NYC’s Advertising Week safely in our rear view mirror I thought it would be helpful to post a summary of the biggest highlights and eyebrow raisers. Digiday has a solid roundup in the attached link. There are a few points in here you already know, like the rise of Asian techs Tencent/Alibaba, and continued disclosures of fraud traffic issues – this time from the Financial Times. But there were also a few notable stories which flew under the radar. One of the most intriguing to me was eMarketer’s release of fresh data on the state of TV cord cutting in the US. In the chart below you’ll see two lines – the red is for “cord cutters” who disband from normal cable use (usually by subscribing to some sort of OTT option instead), and the black line is for “cord nevers” who never had a cable sub in the first place. Right now there are over 56M combined viewers in these groups, and the total is expected to balloon to over 80M in just the next four years. This one stat alone really explains why the TV and Cable broadcasters are rushing into content creation instead of just relying on their legacy distribution businesses. And who thought they wouldn’t learn something new during Advertising Week?!?

MOBILE AD REVENUE’S TAIL OF THE TAPE: We all know mobile ad revenue is currently dominated by the Goo-FBoo duopoly, but it’s still an eye opener to see just how concentrated ad spending is between those two. In another eMarketer chart below, you can see the current spending shares and forecast trend of where things are headed. If you include Instagram within FB’s total the duopoly is now taking in over 65% of the mobile ad spending in the US. And yes, the Goo-FBoo share is expected to increase to an astounding 72% by 2019. Keep in mind this is just mobile revenue (not including traditional web). But since almost all the future growth in digital media is happening on the mobile side, it’s safe to say we’ve got two big fish in the mobile pond and then everyone else.

APPLE ON APPLE MUSIC: On Friday Apple announced it crossed the 30M threshold for worldwide subscribers. They used the press occasion to lay out the long-term vision for where streaming as an industry could go and what needs to be done to improve the current music ecosystem. The original article was published by Billboard, but it’s really long and self-promoting (trust me, I read it over the weekend). So I thought it would be better to give you a summary in the attached Musically link. Apple Music exec Jimmy Iovine teases out the idea of going deeper with content than simply streaming songs in order to convert fans into “super fans”. Mr. Iovine’s other assertion is that the music industry would be better served if Billboard magazine (who happened to be giving the interview) reweighted the sources for its chart rankings. Iovine’s suggestion is to have user uploaded sources like YouTube decreasing in weight and streaming services like Apple (surprise!) increasing. This is a savvy not to mention self-serving suggestion, because if artists know their “spins” on the streaming services count more towards their Billboard chart numbers they’ll focus more on streaming in the first place. Interestingly there’s nothing in this piece about ad monetization within their streaming platform, which is consistent with Apple’s sell-you-the-device-feed-you-the-content strategy.

Have a great Monday guys!