In This Issue: Forbes.com Ad Chaos / More Counterfeiters Advertising Online / 2024 Advertising Forecast Looking Better / Advertisers Still Don’t Understand Gaming / LinkedIn Expanding Video Posting / Qatar-Newsmax Connection / Costco Testing Furniture & Appliance Showrooms / I Am Better Than AI At Work
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
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There’s a lot going on and—if you’re anything like me—you want to make sense of what it means for the industry (and your job, and you, etc. and on and on).
I hope you find these links helpful.
-Neal
Forbes.com Ad Chaos: “Forbes for years ran an alternate version of its website where it packed ads that were intended to run on Forbes.com, another sign that brands don’t always get what they pay for in the opaque digital-advertising market.
The alternate site, which Forbes shut down Tuesday following inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, featured stories from Forbes.com that were stretched into formats that can fit many more ads, like slideshows and articles written in a list format, known as “listicles.”
One 700-word article was turned into a 34-slide slideshow, exposing the person who read it on a computer to about 150 ads instead of around seven for someone who read the original piece.”
More Counterfeiters Advertising Online: The Hippie Shake, a U.K.-based ’70s-inspired apparel brand, first noticed fake accounts advertising its products on Facebook at the end of January. Founder and managing director Ben Hession told Modern Retail the problem has been “a pain” for the small team and seems to come in waves.
Here’s how it works: A person comes across a Facebook ad boasting unbelievable discounts for The Hippie Shake’s products. The Facebook user is taken to a website that has many of the trappings of a legitimate brand page: lots of product imagery, a banner advertising free shipping. But in their rush to take advantage of a deal, the user might miss that the website URL doesn’t exactly line up with The Hippie Shake’s true website. The person begins to suspect something is amiss after an order confirmation email doesn’t arrive. That’s when someone might angrily email The Hippie Shake, only to realize they’ve been duped.
The Hippie Shake is one of many online brands receiving increased reports of fake ads like this on sites such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
2024 Advertising Forecast Looking Better: A major ad forecaster has increased its full-year forecast for U.S. advertising spending in 2024, pointing to an improving economic outlook and strong momentum in digital formats such as social media and streaming video.
Magna, part of Interpublic Group’s Mediabrands, is a media investment firm that also conducts industry research. The firm said Thursday it expects ad sales by media owners to grow 9.2% in 2024 to $369 billion, including the impact of cyclical events such as U.S. elections and the Summer Olympics. That is up from its previous estimate of an 8.4% increase.
Advertisers Still Don’t Understand Gaming: The IAB also found that it’s important for brands and marketers to consider video games to be a separate channel. Brands who don’t consider gaming its own channel told the IAB it doesn’t yet have enough scale, that it has similar ad formats as other media, that it runs on multiple diverse devices (for example a single game can run on Xbox, Steam, and Nintendo Switch) and thus is difficult to buy as a single channel, and that it’s not cost effective.
LinkedIn Expanding Video Posting: LinkedIn is testing a new TikTok-like short-form video feed, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday. With this new test, LinkedIn joins numerous other popular apps that have launched their own short-form video feeds following TikTok’s rise in popularity, including Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Netflix.
The feed was first spotted by Austin Null, a strategy director at an influencer agency called McKinney. Null posted a short demo on LinkedIn showcasing the new feed, which lives in the app’s navigation bar in a new “Video” tab. Once you tap on the new Video button, you will enter into a vertical feed of short videos that you can swipe through.
Qatar-Newsmax Connection: In 2019 and 2020, Sheikh Sultan bin Jassim Al Thani, a former Qatari government official and the owner of a London-based investment fund, Heritage Advisors, invested in Newsmax. The investment has not been previously reported.
Newsmax had been looking for outside investors to better compete with its much larger rival, Fox News, according to people who spoke at the time with its founder and CEO, Christopher Ruddy. Before and after the investment, senior newsroom leaders urged Newsmax staff to soften coverage of Qatar, current and former employees said. A representative for Newsmax strongly disputed that the network “slanted coverage to be favorable to Qatar,” and that Ruddy had told staff not to criticize the country.
Costco Testing Furniture & Appliance Showrooms: The showroom project is in the process of seeking and receiving permits from the municipality, said Christine Lasley, a Costco director of real estate development at the company’s headquarters in Issaquah, Washington. She also worked on the development of the new business center in Anchorage, she said.
Lasley declined to provide an estimated completion date for the showroom, citing uncertainties with timelines to receive permits for modifications.
The showroom plans to sell large home items such as furniture and appliances, she said.
I Am Better Than AI At Work:
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