Welcome to 2022, when even our work computers tell us we’re getting too much screen time. And while it can be harder to cut back on medium screen, people seem to be more mindful about their small-screen time—some are even using flip phones.

Read the room: As concern mounts over our collective tech habits and the potential damage of absorbing too much bad news—aka doomscrolling—publisher Penguin Random House saw an opportunity to get people reading with its new campaign, “Slow Down, Read a Book.”

• “I think reading is positioned to help people escape and help people think more deeply, and help people relax. And it’s almost a foil to social media in that way,” Carly Gorga, director of creative strategy, brand marketing at Penguin Random House, told us.

Get lit(erary)

While Penguin Random House saw a spike in reading at the start of the pandemic, Gorga said the company’s consumer insights team found that four mindsets were primarily responsible for keeping people from reading these days:

• “Reading feels hard and boring”
• “I’m not motivated to read”
• “I don’t know where to start”
• “I spent too much time mindlessly scrolling social media”

The fourth finding validated Gorga’s own struggle to read over the last two years. “I think so much of it is because of the anxiety that’s caused by the [state of the] world and caused by the ongoing flow of information at every turn,” she said.

Inspo: To combat doomscrolling, Penguin Random House took inspiration from digital rest stops to create ads that remind people to scroll a little slower or stop altogether. It’s not the first time the publisher has focused its marketing efforts on mental health. In 2020, it also started a campaign called “Read to Sleep,” on the benefits of reading before bed.

Click here to keep reading.—KH

Picture an entirely full Google Sheet. Every available cell is occupied. Are you shuddering?

Until recently, that nightmare was a reality for the ad operations team at PRX, a nonprofit public media company and the podcast publisher behind networks Radiotopia and TRAX.

• PRX’s ad ops and sales teams rely on its Dovetail podcast publishing and monetization platform—which is also used by the likes of TED, the Boston Globe, and the Smithsonian in partnership with PRX’s sponsorship team—to manage ad campaigns.
• The platform allowed for dynamic ad insertion and targeting, but until recently, PRX had to manually predict inventory availability, CTO Andrew Kuklewicz told Marketing Brew.

Big picture: Now, an updated version of the platform includes a forecasting tool that seeks to address that issue, one of many indications across the industry that podcast advertising is becoming more modern and technologically advanced as ad revenue continues to rise.

Keep reading here.—AM

As we wrote earlier this week, streamers like Hulu and HBO Max are leaning into experiential marketing to help their platforms and series stand out IRL.

Experiential activations were having a bit of a *moment* in 2019. At the time, Ad Age warned that experiential marketing “may have reached its peak.” Of course, the pandemic changed that narrative.

This year, experiential is once again carving out a place in marketing budgets.

• In Q2, Omnicon posted a 37% year over year organic revenue increase for its experiential discipline. IPG also experienced double-digit growth; its “specialized communications and experiential solutions” business grew organically by 11%.
• Earlier this year, DDB made three senior hires for its “innovation and experience offering.”
• Heineken, Lipton, and Spotify are just a few brands that have rolled out activations recently.

Survey says: Last week, we asked Marketing Brew readers if upping spend on experiential was in the cards. More than 800 of you answered, with 33% saying your brands (or clients) are investing more in the space.

But 28% said you’re decreasing experiential spend, while the remaining 38% said things are pretty much staying as is.

If you’re moving dollars away from experiential, we want to know why (and where those $$ are going). Hit Reply to let us know.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Gen Z: 24 stats to know about this generation to more effectively reach them with marketing.

: A step-by-step guide to setting up Google Shopping ads.

No thank you: Why email marketers should think about crafting an unsubscribe strategy.

The hottest demo ever: Ready to turn up the heat on TV advertising? Watch Steve-O eat one of the world’s hottest peppers while giving a demo of MNTN Performance TV. Tune in here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

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PwC’s latest Pulse Survey, its second of the year, took a look at the challenges business leaders—including 91 CMOs—are dealing with and how they’re responding.

Cautious optimism: Only 30% of business leaders saw recession as a serious risk, according to the survey, which was conducted Aug. 1–5 among 722 execs in the US.

• Cyber threats are the top concern that execs reported, with 40% saying they’re seeing more frequent and/or broader cyber attacks as a “serious risk.”
• Acquiring and retaining talent was also seen as a serious risk.

The CMO take: CMOs are “on the front lines of the business,” “closest to customers and have the ear of the customer,” per PwC. Don’t get a big head about it.

• CMOs were more likely than others in the C-suite to cite geopolitics, US divisiveness, and climate change as serious risks.
• However, the group was more optimistic than other execs about supply-chain disruptions easing over the next year, businesses being more transparent with their stakeholders, and the likelihood of a recession.

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

• Can brands talk to you via voice assistant while respecting data privacy?
• Staff cuts come to TikTok
• Franchises are turning to pop-up experiences to drum up fervor and FOMO