Streaming services are really taking the adage “the more, the merrier” to heart—and not just when it comes to subscriber counts.

Take satellite radio company SiriusXM. It recently amped up its premium plan by including a complimentary 12-month subscription to Discovery+.

• Richard Beatty, chief subscription revenue officer of SiriusXM, told Marketing Brew the partnership will help SiriusXM sweeten the pot for its new and existing subscribers just as much as it will benefit Discovery+, which wants to boost its own subscriber count as it heads into its second year.
• “They are fairly new as a subscription business,” Beatty explained. “What better way for them to get recognition than [to] bundle [it] with something that people are extremely familiar with?”

Seeing double: The arrangement joins an ever-growing list of companies pairing up to boost adoption rates on both services. Whether partnerships are with other entertainment companies or with service providers like Verizon, lengthy free trials and giveaways help get the attention of consumers overwhelmed with entertainment options and their separate subscription fees.

If executed smartly, long-term partnerships can boost audiences for streaming services at the outset and help retain customers of both businesses.

“It’s a win-win for everybody,” Beatty said.

Scaling on the cheap

Free trials are nothing new, but Verizon and Disney+ changed the game in 2019 when certain Verizon customers got a year of Disney+ for free.

• Results: Disney+ has since ballooned in popularity, with about one-fifth of its early subscribers coming in through Verizon’s doors. Disney+ reported a healthy 118 million subscribers as of Q4 2021. So it’s no wonder companies like AMC+ and Discovery+ rushed to strike similar long-term free trials with the telco.

There’s a lot in it for streamers. A 12-month giveaway locks in customers long-term, giving streamers time to convince them their service is essential. For streaming services with ad-supported tiers, scaling up fast is also crucial to the advertising side, as marketers will only spend on streaming services if they believe there’s an audience there to target—and viewers on a free-trial are still targetable.

Go to market

Partnerships can also help companies save on marketing dollars. Acquiring new customers is expensive; Deloitte estimates that the average customer-acquisition cost in the streaming-video space is $200. If a subscription service charges $12 a month, it’ll take nearly a year and a half to recoup those marketing costs alone. Team up with an established service provider, and companies can divvy up the marketing costs.

• The SiriusXM–Discovery+ deal, for example, will be marketed to SiriusXM’s more than 34 million subscribers, representing “tremendous value for our partners,” Beatty said. In exchange, SiriusXM—which in its own early days benefitted from loads of marketing partnerships with auto manufacturers—gets shiny new services to show off in its ads.

Read the full story here.—KS

Edelman will keep some fossil-fuel money, thank you very much. Following a review of its client roster, the PR firm will not stop working with ExxonMobil and Shell, two companies it’s received criticism from activists for working with.

CEO Richard Edelman wrote in a blog post last week that the company wants to do more work “helping organizations acknowledge the significance of climate change and start their journey towards action.”

Back up: The review was conducted in response to increasing public pressure from activists like Clean Creatives, a coalition made up of creatives and agencies that have pledged not to work with fossil-fuel companies.

• “Advertising and PR campaigns by fossil-fuel interests are one of the biggest barriers to climate action,” Duncan Meisel, campaign director of Clean Creatives, told Marketing Brew in October.
• The group has been calling on Edelman to drop ties with all fossil-fuel clients since last year.

Since that didn’t happen, Clean Creatives wrote on Twitter that they felt “Richard Edelman never took this review process seriously.”

The scientist who inspired Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Don’t Look Up, Michael Mann, also weighed in. He told Adweek that climate change “requires a fundamental and rapid shift away from fossil fuels, and there’s nothing in Edelman’s latest statements that demonstrates that they recognize that.”

Hot water, hotter world: Edelman is not the only agency facing pressure to drop ties with oil and gas companies, but it does seem to be getting the most attention, possibly due to ExxonMobil’s reported history of “spreading disnformation” about the climate crisis.

• A 2017 Harvard University study found that ExxonMobil has “promoted doubt” about climate change in some ads since 1977. It’s also been accused of greenwashing in areas like biofuel technology.—KH

Ad tech is back. According to a report from the ad-tech investment group Luma Partners, that section of the industry had an incredibly busy 2021.

The stat: Deal-making was up 82% year over year in the media and marketing technology sectors, signaling excitement in a space many considered to be on shaky ground as privacy concerns and regulatory oversight became more en vogue.

• Those deals include both mergers and acquisitions, like AppLovin’s acquisition of MoPub from Twitter.
• Plus, lots of companies in the sector went public in 2021, such as Outbrain. In fact, it was the “most active year on record” in terms of new entrants to the category, per the report, with 18 companies going public across the industry.

Luma Partners—famously known for its “Lumascape” series of charts that are more reminiscent of a psychedelic hedge maze than an investing slide depicting the complexities of the industry—is considered one of the leading voices in ad tech.

Outlook for 2022? The group expects mergers and acquisitions to continue as buyers look for tools and businesses more suited to the “permanent changes in consumer behavior that are downstream from the pandemic,” like the upsticks in streaming, gaming, and ecommerce.—RB

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

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Data, measurement, and analytics firm EDO released its 2021 wrapup of TV advertising insights, including a look at the year’s highest-performing programs for advertisers, predictions for the year ahead, and more.

And the rose goes to: ABC’s The Bachelor, which—per EDO’s “search engagement rate” metric—garnered the most search activity for marketers. According to its research, people who saw an ad during the show were 45% more likely to search for said advertiser compared to the “average” primetime broadcast.

Fast food loves streaming: And Taco Bell loves Hulu, apparently. Ads for the chain made up 16% of restaurant-category ads on Hulu, the most of any brand in the sector.

The new celeb: EDO predicts brands that partner with “authentic, interesting” celebrities as opposed to “picture-perfect stars”—even if they have a smaller following—will perform best among Gen Z and millennials moving forward.

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

• A conversation with Mo Said, founder of Mojo Supermarket
• Mood Board: The subtle references in Heineken’s Dry January ad
• After three years without one, the Oscars will have a host again