📓 The Creativ Brief: What are Advertising NewFronts?
The TikTok ban. The IAB explained. Netflix mute on membership. Meta AI. Digital spend trends. Coachella billboards!
Next week thousands of advertisers, agencies, and media owners will coalesce in Manhattan for Newfronts, hosted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau, more commonly known as the IAB, is an American advertising business organization tasked with conducting research, and supporting members via public policy. The group also sets general standards for digital advertising, including what constitutes a view, digital tracking rules, cookie enablement, and more.
In 2008, the IAB began the Newfronts, an annual conference to collect digital media firms, advertisers, and agencies to learn about cutting edge innovations and wheel and deal.
The NewFronts was a digital reaction to the traditional Upfronts, a series of Springtime meetings and large media presentations, when hundreds of millions of dollars are allocated between advertisers and media organizations. In these meetings large brands like P&G, Unilever, Home Depot, and more will allocate the majority of their media spend in large buys. These became known as ‘upfront media buys’.
As digital media began its ascendent rise in 2008, the IAB devised a competing conference to collect digital media players to host similar presentations, present their tech, and secure media dollars. Ironically, the original NewFront digital players including Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Connected TV platforms have superseded their legacy counterparts in both cultural importance and total dollars spent.
Creativ Strategies will be in town attending several meetings around the city as well as the mainstage presentation on May 1st with clients.
If you would like to say hello in NewFronts in NYC next week, please reply to this email! See you at NewFronts 2024!
3 Stories Dominating Media and Tech Headlines
This marks a significant shift away from the industry norm of focusing on subscriber growth, as Netflix aims to shift investor attention towards metrics like revenue, operating margin, free cash flow, and user engagement time.
Why it matters: Netflix's decision reflects a strategic move towards emphasizing profitability and overall financial health over subscriber acquisition. This shift challenges the traditional narrative of the "streaming wars" and signals Netflix's evolution from disruptor to dominant incumbent, prompting questions about whether other media companies will follow suit in redefining their reporting metrics.
This move follows a recent report on Meta's testing of Meta AI on Instagram’s search bar, indicating the company's efforts to position itself in the generative AI tools landscape, competing with services like those from OpenAI.
Why it matters: Tech companies like Meta are leveraging AI to enhance user experience and engagement. Although challenges related to content moderation and AI-generated responses remain, expect Meta to continue rolling out Meta AI in various countries and platforms.
The bill includes aid for Ukraine and Israel and passed by a wide margin in both the House and Senate.
Why it matters: ByteDance has nine months to divest TikTok, with a possible 90-day extension, or else it would become illegal for app stores to distribute the app in the U.S., reflecting growing concerns over data privacy and national security in the tech landscape and mirroring similar actions taken by other countries against the platform.
Creativ Spotlight - Join us at ThinkLA Spring Social
Our team is attending ThinkLA’s Spring social on May 9th at Tiato Kitchen & Garden in Santa Monica. We’ll join for a celebratory evening filled with interactive surprises, networking with colleagues, and making new contacts. Join us and ThinkLA at their first social event of the year!
Use the code “SPR10” at checkout for a 10% discount on tickets!
Stat of the Week - Digital Advertising Spend Graphed
Since 2008 when the NewFronts were founded by the IAB, digital advertising spend has increased 2500%.
In the last three years, the US’s digital advertising revenue from 2021 to 2023 accounts for 42% of total online advertising revenue since the start of the century, likely due to a rise in new channels and formats including digital audio (podcasts and streaming) and digital video (CTV and streaming).
This growth underscores the sustained dominance of digital platforms amid emerging formats like digital audio and video, evolving consumer preferences ,and rapid technological advancements in the advertising tech, and media sector.
One Fun Thing - Coachella’s Billboard Frenzy
The Coachella billboard blitz has become an event in itself over the last several years. Brands and musicians know the audience of trendsetting festival goers is a valuable one to market to directly. Check out this years’ best billboards here!