TWTW: US ad spending surges<>Influencers to help Twitter double revenues<>Apple podcasts subscriptions go live<>FB launches ads globally for Insta Reels<>McKinsey on strategy in the post-pandemic era
The week that was in marketing, tech and business
Monthly US ad spends grew 56% year on year, continuing the recovery seen in March and April. Almost all media gained, except for consumer magazines. And out-of-home came back strongly. Mediapost has the details.
Twitter has been accused of being terribly slow in their monetisation game, some blaming Jack Dorsey and his other interests. There have been recurring calls for getting a CEO for the blue bird. However, it looks like there has been an awakening of sorts. A flurry of revenue generation plans has been unveiled.
The company announced its first subscription service earlier this month, called Twitter Blue. It now lets people tip select users through the app, and the company acquired newsletter platform Revue to allow creators to publish and monetize newsletters. It’s also rumored to be close to launching its Super Follows feature, which would allow some users to charge others for select content.
All of this comes after the company set an ambitious goal to double its revenue by the end of 2023 and grow its user base to 315 million daily active users.
Will this bird fly? Read the CNBC report to find out more.
Apple is another who have not really made much of a success from ‘other’ revenue sources. They finally announced a global roll out of their podcast subscription offering. One can argue that with their hardware and the app store, they pretty much have their hands and coffers full.
Apple’s delay to invest in the Podcasts market has given its rivals a head start on growing their own audience for podcasts. At the time of the spring announcement of subscriptions, for example, an industry report suggested that Spotify’s podcast listeners would top Apple’s for the first time in 2021.
Despite the competition, Apple is betting its massive install base will bring in creators. Those creators agree to pay Apple a 30% cut of their subscription revenue in year one, just like subscription-based iOS apps. That cut drops to 15% in year two. Spotify, by comparison, is taking no revenue cut for the next two years while its program gets off the ground. It will then take only a 5% fee.
Techcrunch has all the details.
Facebook, unlike Twitter, are totally in the zone when it comes to generating ad revenues and now ads on Insta Reels have been rolled out worldwide. Read more.
Finally, take a break from the tech giants and read about what McKinsey has to say about how we think of strategy needs to be re-looked at in the post-pandemic world.
That’s a wrap for this edition. Have a fruitful week.
Suprio