Happy Thursday, especially to Microsoft, which came out on top in the contest to become Netflix’s global advertising technology and sales partner as the streamer prepares to roll out its ad-supported tier.
In today’s edition:
—Kelsey Sutton, Phoebe Bain, Ryan Barwick
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Illustration: Dianna “Mick” McDougall, Photos: Netflix, Getty Images
Stranger Things isn’t over yet, but the series’s two-part release this summer may signal the beginning of the end for one benefit of watching Netflix shows.
The streaming service changed entertainment forever in 2013 when it dropped all 13 episodes of political drama House of Cards’s first season at once. Since then, it’s been a proponent of letting its users binge entire seasons of its originals, even as other entertainment companies have begun to implement weekly releases like on old-fashioned TV.
But times have changed: Netflix released international hit Money Heist in two parts last fall, and dropped the fourth and final season of crime drama Ozark in two parts early this year. Ditto for Stranger Things, which was released in two batches over the span of five weeks. This fall, Netflix will do it again with the fourth and final season of Manifest.
By some metrics, it’s paying off:
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Money Heist drove considerable viewership in September and December, when each part was released.
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Ozark spent at least 18 weeks attracting more than a billion viewing minutes, according to Nielsen.
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And Season 4 of Stranger Things became the most-watched English-language series in the service’s history, with all four seasons among the top 10 English-language titles on the service for at least seven weeks straight, according to the company’s tracker of top titles.
Looking ahead: Viewership doesn’t always mean subscriber growth, which Netflix is hard-pressed to prove to investors. But if fans want to see how their favorite shows wrap up, they’ve had to stay subscribed for months. That could make all the difference for a service looking to keep consumer churn down and erect scaffolding for an ad-supported tier.
“When you stretch things out, when you string things along, you keep people engaged, and you keep them coming back and you de-risk the possibility of a binge followed by a cold-turkey quit,” explained Eric Schmitt, research director and analyst at Gartner.
Keep reading here.—KS
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TikTok
Anyone who has lost hours of their life scrolling through TikTok probably knows that brand mascots have performed exceptionally well for marketers on the platform, from Duolingo to the Empire State Building. The TikTok algorithm seems to love it when characters, whether they’re influencers or mascots, get in front of the camera.
So in June, when TikTok rolled out Avatars (the platform’s answer to Bitmoji and contribution to the metaverse), many social media pros couldn’t help but compare these digitized versions of people to brand mascots.
- Specifically, some marketers said avatars could function in a similar way mascots do on the platform, helping improve TikTok content performance for brands looking to diversify their creative strategy on the platform.
Doppelgängers: “This is a digital form of a mascot,” Katie McKiever, an independent social media consultant, told Marketing Brew. In her experience, she said, the content that does well on TikTok has to have one of two things: a person, or another type of character (like Duo or a Sour Patch Kids candy), representing the brand.
Read the full story here.—PB
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Francis Scialabba
The Federal Trade Commision has stern words for data brokers: If you claim that your data is anonymous, it better be. Or else.
Kristin Cohen, acting associate director of the FTC’s privacy and identity division, dedicated an entire blog on Monday to “location, health, and other sensitive” data, which mobile devices collect and advertisers routinely use to…well, and it’s hard to sugarcoat this—know exactly where you are and what you do, in the interest of targeting you with relevant ads.
Cohen did not mince words: “Companies may try to placate consumers’ privacy concerns by claiming they anonymize or aggregate data. Firms making claims about anonymization should be on guard that these claims can be a deceptive trade practice and violate the FTC Act when untrue,” she wrote. “Companies that make false claims about anonymization can expect to hear from the FTC.”
To back up the claim, Cohen pointed to an oft-cited study that found that, under certain circumstances, 95% of 1.5 million people in a dataset were “uniquely identifiable” through “four location points with timestamps.”
So, even if advertisers aggregate or anonymize their data, it can still potentially be used in very problematic ways.
Why it matters: Concerns around location data, personal privacy, and digital advertising writ large have been thrust in the spotlight since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, considering precise location data could and has been used to target people seeking an abortion.—RB
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Marketing gets the markup…like pretty much everything nowadays, sigh. Consumers and businesses may be stressin’, but advertisers can be part of the solution with well-timed, relevant, optimized offers. Evaluate new media channels methodically and solidify tactics that work. Vericast outlines 5 ways your brand can thrive despite rising costs here.
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Francis Scialabba
There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.
Christmas in July: Twitter says it’s time for marketers to start thinking about their holiday campaigns.
NSFW: You’ve seen RadioShack’s new and improved (??) Twitter feed. Here’s a look at the strategy behind it.
2.0: Victoria Secret’s rebranding is also turning some heads.
Lights, camera, Brew: Morning Brew is on YouTube! Our shows cover the tech, trends, and companies you care about—and don’t worry, we’re not jargon people. Watch here.
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Looking for a fresh start? Let’s find you the job you deserve on the Marketing Brew Job Board!
Today’s featured openings:
See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.
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Some ads that appear alongside Google searches for student-loan relief “appear to violate content policies or lead people to scams,” according to the Tech Transparency Project, the research arm of watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability.
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TikTok is rolling out new updates that will allow users to better filter content that they don’t want to see.
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Blade, the rideshare helicopter platform, hired Roisin Branch, former VP of marketing for Equinox’s SoulCycle, as its first CMO.
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Dotdash Meredith has recently been “impacted by softening advertiser demand,” parent company IAC said, with revenue down 23% YoY in June, noted THR reporter Alex Weprin.
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Delta reconnected some travelers with their bags by flying a plane from London to Detroit with 1,000 pieces of luggage and zero passengers. A spokesperson described the move as a “creative solution.”
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Deloitte is out with its latest “Back-to-School” and “Back-to-College” surveys, which shed light on upcoming shopping trends based on surveys of 1,200 parents with students K-12 and 950 parents with college-age kids.
Inflation who? The back-to-school market is growing with regard to both age groups.
- Deloitte anticipates that parents of K-12 students will spend $34.4 billion back-to-school shopping, or about $661 per student.
- That total figure is up 5.8% from last year, and up 24% from 2019.
- “Back-to-college” spend is expected to hit $28.3 billion this year, or about $1,600 per student.
- That’s up 6% from 2021, and up 13% from 2019.
- Still, 57% of back-to-school shoppers surveyed said they’re concerned about price increases as a result of inflation.
ESG: Parents will spend even more on sustainable products, according to Deloitte.
- Half (50%) of K-12 parents said they’re choosing eco-friendly products when possible.
- That group is likely to spend 22% more than the average back-to-school shopper.
- Close to that share (47%) of back-to-college shoppers said the same, and “report spending 19% more than the average back-to-college shopper.”
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Trends and news help you stay in the know. But the best way to improve your marketing? Study what top marketers are actually doing.
Enter the Growth Newsletter. Each week, we interview experts to get actionable growth tactics. Then we share them with you. See examples and get the next one here.
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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.
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