RIP to whoever spent god-knows-what on a Taco Bell NFT. Despite big promises, the NFT market is way down and crypto has crashed, leaving marketers wondering if Web3 is an area they should keep paying attention to or investing in.

Like we wrote last year on the heels of Facebook’s Meta makeover, Web3 and the metaverse still feel a bit overhyped and, it would appear, further away from mass adoption than ever before.

• According to a recent poll of more than 700 Marketing Brew readers, nearly 50% said they think Web3 opportunities for marketers are overhyped, while only 23% disagreed. (The remaining respondents said they weren’t sure.)

Looking ahead: To be clear, advertisers and brands haven’t yet given up on the metaverse or other Web3 concepts. Rather, they’re trying to make it all more approachable and, in some cases, avoiding Web3 terminology altogether.

• “Some of that big hype around the metaverse as a concept, everybody wanting to talk about the metaverse and how it was going to change everything very quickly, has really died down,” Sky Canaves, senior analyst for retail and e-commerce at Insider Intelligence, told us.
• Not to mention the US economy, which is in a much different place than it was last year. Advertisers have curbed spend, impacting tech companies like Meta and Snap.

That could mean there’s less time and money for experimentation, potentially taking money away from metaverse concepts that the director of the IAB Experience Center, Derek J. Smith, called a “black box in every sense of the word” for most marketers.

Read the story here.—RB

At the start of January, Vogue proclaimed that “the 2014 Tumblr girl is back.” Clearly, it was onto something.

With just days left in 2022, a Tumblr resurgence seems more likely than ever.

Why? A lot of it has to do with Twitter. As we wrote in May, Tumblr saw a 19% increase in new user signups relative to average daily user signups on the same day that Elon Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter.

Fast-forward: After Musk officially bought Twitter in late October, Tumblr saw more growth. Last month, its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, tweeted that both iOS and Android downloads of the app were up nearly 60% between November 1 and November 7.

Brandblr: As brands pause advertising on Twitter, Tumblr is trying to court them.

• Roughly 20 brands got in touch with Tumblr during the week of November 7, the company’s VP of brand partnerships and sales, Ari Levine, told Ad Age last week. He said Tumblr is working with several brands to get accounts started for them before year’s end.
• Even with momentum and several ad offerings, the 15-year-old platform that’s known for its quirks and fandom has “always been a notoriously challenging place for brands to break into,” Tamara Littleton, CEO and founder of The Social Element, told the Wall Street Journal.

This week, we asked if you think brands should be on Tumblr. More than 500 readers answered. The majority, it seems, thought it was best to stay away:

• 64% said lol no
• 34% said why not?

If you’re experimenting with advertising on Tumblr, hit Reply to let us know how you’re approaching it (and how it’s going).—MS

Retail Brew’s Mauve Allsup recently looked back at what the retail industry learned about the metaverse and Web3 this year. Read a snippet below or click here for the story.

The one-off NFT drops and branded games of earlier in the year are no more, replaced by the longer-term inclusion of Web3 in omnichannel strategies and a focus on ROI, Olga Dogadkina, co-founder and CEO of VR platform Emperia, said. That’s a shift away from brands viewing the metaverse purely through an engagement lens, she added.

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

Making a list: Some musings on why these are “the nine greatest ads, and what makes them effective.”

Explainer: Breaking down Google’s Performance Max, which AdExchanger described as “the blackest black box of all Google ad products.”

Disappearing content: How to actually use TikTok Stories for your brand.

Marketing Brew joined forces with some of the best minds in the industry to put on a premier one-day event covering all the hot topics and challenges that are top of mind for marketers in 2022.

Featured speakers from McDonald’s, REI, Magnolia Bakery, and many more shared their knowledge about innovations, strategies, and solutions to the modern marketer’s biggest challenges.

If you missed out, not to worry—we’ve made a recording of the event available on demand to bring our Marketing Brew subscribers up to speed. Check it out for a replay of the most action-packed event of the year.

Stat: Diversity in video ads is declining. White people made up 73% of “identifiable faces” in advertising in North America between January and October this year, compared to 66% in 2021 and 67% in 2020, according to research from Extreme Reach.

Quote: “There’s no question that more and more people are turning to private labels…Everyone’s cost-conscious right now. If they are not already being impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, they are afraid that they will be.”—Julian Skelly, head of Publicis Sapient’s European retail practice, to the Wall Street Journal in regards to the private-label surge

Read: The 30 best ads of 2022, according to Ad Age.

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

• Why companies like Netflix see store shelves as a place to connect with customers
• New AI tool can help advertisers vet podcast hosts based on news they make outside of their shows
• Many people are struggling with inflation. Should brands address it in ads?