NY Times is now a gaming platform...

April 1, 2024 Ryan Craver

NY Times has become a success story in the publishing world as they have invested over the years in their digital offering…and games like Wordle. h/t: @matthewball

WhatsApp = The World $META

March 30, 2024 Ryan Craver

Zuck’s $16 billion acquisition doesn’t look so expensive 10 years later. Keep in mind, Facebook has yet to fire up the monetization tricks.

“In 2020, WhatsApp announced it had more than two billion users around the world. It’s bigger than iMessage (1.3 billion users), TikTok (1 billion), Telegram (800 million), Snap (400 million) and Signal (40 million.) It stands head and shoulders above fellow Meta platform Instagram, which captures around 1.4 billion users. The only thing bigger than WhatsApp is Facebook itself, with more than three billion users .”

DSP Remains a Duopoly

March 26, 2024 Ryan Craver

Digiday recently ran a poll with ad executives on whether Amazon’s Demand Side Platform (DSP) offering is gaining on the major incumbents. It seems as though it hasn’t:

“Just 5% of the 44 respondents in a survey by Digiday chose Amazon as their preferred DSP if they could only select one. In contrast, nearly four in 10 (39%) opted for Google’s DV360. The same goes for The Trade Desk.”

I do agree that Amazon trails the duopoly of Google and Trade Desk, However, I believe Amazon is taking a bit different direction. As Google and Trade Desk are focused on the large cap advertisers, Amazon has sought to sprinkle “DSP-lite” on the merchants, sellers and brands using their Amazon Vendor Central and Seller Central platforms to sell product. Offerings like Sponsored Display and Sponsored TV are some of those offerings. These offerings are simple versions of DSP allowing for marketers to “set it and forget it.” Amazon surely covets the large cap advertisers but this alternate route surely helps their advertising revenue continue to grow aggressively.

ChatGPT vs Google

March 24, 2024 Ryan Craver

Had a chance to listen and read the Lex Fridman pod with Sam Altman of OpenAI. Transcript found here. Found a few quotes particularly interesting. On challenging Google:

“I find that boring. I mean, if the question is if we can build a better search engine than Google or whatever, then sure, we should go, people should use the better product, but I think that would so understate what this can be. Google shows you 10 blue links, well, 13 ads and then 10 blue links, and that’s one way to find information. But the thing that’s exciting to me is not that we can go build a better copy of Google search, but that maybe there’s just some much better way to help people find and act on and synthesize information. Actually, I think ChatGPT is that for some use cases, and hopefully we’ll make it be like that for a lot more use cases.”

“But I don’t think it’s that interesting to say, “How do we go do a better job of giving you 10 ranked webpages to look at than what Google does?” Maybe it’s really interesting to go say, “How do we help you get the answer or the information you need? How do we help create that in some cases, synthesize that in others, or point you to it in yet others?” But a lot of people have tried to just make a better search engine than Google and it is a hard technical problem, it is a hard branding problem, it is a hard ecosystem problem. I don’t think the world needs another copy of Google.”

On the ChatGPT business model and use of ads for monetization:

“I kind of hate ads just as an aesthetic choice. I think ads needed to happen on the internet for a bunch of reasons, to get it going, but it’s a momentary industry. The world is richer now. I like that people pay for ChatGPT and know that the answers they’re getting are not influenced by advertisers. I’m sure there’s an ad unit that makes sense for LLMs, and I’m sure there’s a way to participate in the transaction stream in an unbiased way that is okay to do, but it’s also easy to think about the dystopic visions of the future where you ask ChatGPT something and it says, “Oh, you should think about buying this product,” or, “You should think about going here for your vacation,” or whatever.”

“And I don’t know, we have a very simple business model and I like it, and I know that I’m not the product. I know I’m paying and that’s how the business model works. And when I go use Twitter or Facebook or Google or any other great product but ad-supported great product, I don’t love that, and I think it gets worse, not better, in a world with AI.”

Don't Call It A Groupon $GRPN Comeback

March 23, 2024 Ryan Craver

Guidance for 2024 calls for flat to slightly down revenue, positive cash flow and positive adjusted EBITDA. This could be a Groupon comeback we are witnessing.

Google Follows Apple’s Privacy Lead

March 4, 2021 Ryan Craver

Google will no longer build user-level profiles within its ad systems nor will the company use such data to enable targeting on non-Google sites. That means Google’s AdX ad exchange and other services that target ads to web inventory outside Google properties will no longer support any cookie replacement identifiers (think the Trade Desk’s Unified ID or identity tech built by LiveRamp)

Wow. I know we were seeing cookies being phased out in a few years but this is considerably more. Apple made the first move and Google had to follow. No one trusts cookies and the privacy trend continues to gain steam. Who benefits? Consumers who value privacy and a less bloated, more efficient web.

The other major winners will be those with all the first party data. Those retailers that have actual sales taking place on their sites and offer ads on their sites. These moves by Apple and Google will only further shift ad dollars to Amazon, Walmart, Instacart and other retailers.

Will Postal Service parcel rate hikes cause a shipper rethink?

February 22, 2021 Ryan Craver

First-class and marketing mail, the traditional cores of the Postal Service, continued their secular declines in 2020, a downward trajectory accelerated by the pandemic. The shipping and package business is currently the lone bright spot, and to capitalize on its growth and offset the costs of processing and delivering parcels, the Postal Service implemented a series of rate increases on shipper-centric products. The increases, which took effect Jan. 24, will reduce, through not eliminate, the Postal Service’s low-price proposition that e-merchants depend on to offer low- or no-cost shipping to end customers.

Will shippers rethink? Most won’t. The difference in price on some of the classes of service is still too high even with the price hikes. Secondly, FedEx and UPS use the USPS for their final mile delivery on their Smartpost and Surepost offerings.

No carrier can profitably deliver to EVERY household in America and these rate hikes only soften the blow. USPS isn’t structured to ever make a profit or have the freedom to do so. With other carriers so reliant on their final mile service and eCommerce booming, we won’t see a mass exodus from USPS volumes anytime soon.

Source: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/will-pos...

Online Advertising Taxes: There Is No Free Lunch

February 15, 2021 Ryan Craver

Maryland is the first to push an online ad tax onto the major online advertisers like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. Maryland will not be the first and it sounds as though they will not be the last.

MultiState, a government relations firm that tracks local legislatures, says it is eyeing at least 17 bills in 10 states that aim to impose taxes on tech giants, their profits, the data they collect and the services they offer.

Although these funds may provide some short term relief to budget shortfalls or in this case to a good cause like education…I fear the cost will ultimately be paid by the end consumer through higher overall pricing of products and services. We all know there is no such thing as free shipping. So called “free shipping” is built into the cost of the product you buy and a large portion of these new taxes will too.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/...

Amazon Prime Day HOT TAKE

October 14, 2020 Ryan Craver

Been quiet here…coming back with a hot take on Amazon Prime Day that we sent to our clients earlier today. Bottom line: Event was massive for Amazon devices and products but lost a bit of excitement from previous years with the timing push and limited marketing.

1. Business strong but nowhere near as dramatic as previous year events
Most of the brands we manage, license or own all saw Tuesday and Wednesday sales figures up considerably versus the average Tuesday and Wednesday. Those that are established on the platform for years have seen 30-70% growth rates whilst newer, less established brands have seen 200-500% growth.

2. Amazon products were front and center
Prime Day originally started as a driver to sell Amazon Prime subscriptions. As Amazon began to reach a saturation point in the US and UK for subscriptions, the focus of the home page(s) has become Amazon devices and private label products with a major focus on Alexa devices and grocery. The most aggressive and promoted deals were those for Amazon products.

3. Advertising costs were up significantly
Our cost per clicks (on Amazon) and cost per impressions (off Amazon) were dramatically higher. Amazon Advertising is now table stakes for most brands. This has led to more demand and higher costs. We are also seeing a pullback by Amazon on funding off Amazon marketing for brand product they do not own. On average we saw a 25-43% increase in the cost of a click or impression.