Ads are everywhere in streaming video. They’re on HBO Max, Hulu, and Paramount+. They’re coming soon to Disney+ and Netflix. And, of course, they’re all over YouTube.

Skip it: But the continued rollout of multi-tiered streaming services makes it easier than ever for consumers to sidestep marketing messages. If you’re willing to pay for an ad-free tier, you can watch and listen to programming without any advertising interruptions at all.

That can pose a challenge for marketers keen on reaching higher-income households:

• The same consumers with the most disposable income to spend on new cars, clothes, and household goods are also the ones most likely to be in the financial position to skip ads when watching TV.
• In the long run, that stands to reshape marketing spend, and it’s already influencing the ways marketers think about getting in front of affluent—and increasingly elusive—eyeballs.

“The people that advertisers most want to target are hiding from the advertisers,” said Eric Schmitt, research director and analyst on the Gartner for Marketing Leaders. “It really is going to have some interesting knock-on effects for the ad business over time.”

“Buying out”

While marketers targeting the “truly rich” are not traditionally big television advertising spenders, many brands looking to position their products as aspirational purchases—like Apple or Lexus, for instance—are.

Reality check: Advertisers and media buyers know that ads, including on TV and digital video advertising, aren’t exactly beloved by audiences. “They’re going to do whatever they can to get content without your interruption if they can afford it,” said Joel Kaplan, executive creative director and partner at the agency M/H, which has done work for high-end brands like Audi.

Marketers targeting higher-income consumers are looking for other ways through. Read the full story here.—KS

Like Web3, brand “community” is a vague term that’s been picking up steam in marketing circles over the past couple of years. It’s basically become shorthand to describe how brands are using different tactics to forge two-way relationships with loyal customers.

Some say it could be partly a response to Apple’s iOS privacy changes, which have made advertising on platforms like Instagam and Facebook more difficult and expensive.

• Gefen Skolnick, founder of Couplet Coffee, told Marketing Brew in May that she had yet to spend a dollar on paid advertising. Instead, she found other ways to promote the brand, such as hosting queer art show and poetry nights, explaining that “people actually need to build a true brand and not just try to sell SKUs with ads anymore.”
• Dulma Altan, a TikTok creator who makes videos about business and marketing, recently told Modern Retail that brands could be using “community” as a customer acquisition and retention strategy following Apple’s changes. “I think everybody is trying to figure out, what do we do now?” Altan said. “What is the next interesting thing?”

What it looks like: It depends. Glossier partly pioneered the concept by proactively leaning on its customers for product ideas and feedback via its Into The Gloss blog. More recently, period brands August and Looni have created “communities” via several different groups on Geneva, per Modern Retail.

Big picture: Krystal Melissa Wu, currently senior community program manager at OpenSpace, told Vox in June that while “community” is currently being billed as the “the golden child of marketing,” it’s not exactly new. Social media has just made it easier to define. “It’s always been a way for businesses to reach new and old audiences,” she told Vox. “It’s just one of those things that seem more apparent now because of social media.”—MS

Startup funding hit record highs last year, with investors injecting $643 billion into companies of all shapes and stages.

• But women-founded companies received a tiny fraction of that cash—in the US, female entrepreneurs received just 2% of venture capital funding.
• Women investors are just as scarce—in 2019, fewer than ten of the top 100 global VC partners were women, according to CB Insights.

None of this would come as a shock to Canadian entrepreneur Karen Danudjaja, who closed the first raise for her superfood latte company, Blume, at the end of July, and who, on August 18, launched a salted-caramel blend focused on libido.

“When I set out, I really wanted [Blume’s backers] to actually be 50% women, which was pretty hard to accomplish,” she told Retail Brew. “We ended up at 40% women invested in the round, which I’m very proud of.”

Retail Brew recently chatted with Danudjaja about fundraising and women entrepreneurship. Read the story here.—MA

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• HBO Max’s app crashed for some viewers during its House of the Dragon premiere. (Speaking of HBO Max, it’s working on a documentary about #BamaRushTok with Vice.)
• Twitter might let users access podcasts through its audio tab soon.
• Netflix said its ad-supported option may not have ads on children’s programs.
• Uber is partnering with e-commerce company Rokt. The car service intends to utilize Rokt’s machine learning technology to improve ad targeting at payment time.
• McDonald’s is testing the Chicken Big Mac in Miami later this month.

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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• How HBO Max threw its marketing might behind “House of the Dragon”
• TikTok, Meta can see user behavior on in-app browsers, according to research
• How one ad campaign is honoring Ukrainian healthcare workers