Digital Transfer: Media Consumption Rising Worldwide (New Report)

Last month, I shared recent research about local journalism, specifically how more Americans are consuming it digitally on news sites and social media than on television and print media.

And while that news isn’t necessarily rosy for those committed to print on its own, it is promising for those incorporating digital … particularly with the latest forecasts from PQ Media regarding media consumption.

Worldwide, total media usage rose 0.3% to 56.15 hours per week, according to PQ Media’s annual Global Consumer Media Usage Forecast. And though that weekly time dropped 0.4% to 76.69 hours in the United States, the forecast shows expansion moving forward.

 

The AI Trends Report For Ecommerce Marketers

Nearly half of ecommerce marketers who are using AI on the job wish they had AI solutions for performing marketing analytics, comparing their company’s performance to similar organizations, and predicting customer behavior and attributes, according to new research.

 

5-Year Hit: Legacy Media Profits Halved, Linear Ads Share Decline

Over the last five years — amid dramatic declines in linear TV, theatrical movies — overall collective profitability for major TV/movie networks based media companies has been cut in half, while streaming has a promise that it has yet to deliver. Global cash flow, earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) among six large legacy media companies declined to $17.2 billion in 2023 from $37.3 billion in 2018, according to MoffettNathanson Research.

Extra Costs Are The No. 1 Reason Consumers Abandon Online Carts

Nearly half (48%) of US adults abandoned their online shopping cart at checkout because the extra costs (shipping, tax, fees) were too high, per a survey from Baymard.

Renewed Interest: Publishers Increasing Focus On Subscriptions In Face Of Traffic, Ad Revenue & AI Challenges

A recent Toolkits survey of publishing executives found that most are increasing their focus on building subscription revenue when compared to a year ago. 

The results stand against any suggestion that, as Toolkits’ Jack Marshall categorizes it, a “broad subscription reversal is underway.”

Only 32% Of Global Publishers Are Actively Preparing For The Cookieless Future

The transition to a cookieless digital landscape has already taken significant strides despite the delay in Google’s phase-out of third-party cookies. With 45% of global web traffic now cookieless on Teads’ SSP, publishers and advertisers are navigating uncharted territory. This shift poses substantial challenges for publishers and advertisers, as highlighted in Teads’ latest survey. The study, involving 555 publishers across 58 countries, reveals a pressing need for the industry to adapt swiftly to these ongoing changes.

B2B Budget Bliss: Resources Are Being Poured Into Acquisition

B2B marketers are in an expensive mood as they allocate resources for acquisition marketing, judging by The State of B2B Customer Acquisition, a study from Stirista, conducted by Ascend2. Of those polled, 89% are positive about meeting their marketing goals this year. That may reflect spending — 72% expect an increase in acquisition initiatives over the next two years.  

Generative AI Is Now the Most Frequently Deployed AI Solution in Organizations

According to the survey, 29% of the 644 respondents from organizations in the U.S., Germany and the U.K. said that they have deployed and are using GenAI, making GenAI the most frequently deployed AI solution. GenAI was found to be more common than other solutions like graph techniques, optimization algorithms, rule-based systems, natural language processing and other types of machine learning.

Yes, Facebook Is Down: Publishers Seeing Drastic Decline In Referrals (New Report)

Last year, in the midst of their still-ongoing battles with legislators and publishers regarding content usage, Meta commissioned a report claiming that less than 3% of what’s ultimately seen in Facebook Feeds are news links. Not only did this represent “an economically small and diminishing role” for the publisher content on the platform, the report claimed, but publishers actually “reap considerable economic benefits” through the traffic driven to their sites.

Recently, Chartbeat and Similarweb released new data highlighting just how steep the decline of Facebook’s referral traffic has gotten.

 

Among Companies, Amazon’s Ad Surge Overshadows Everything Else

The old Google-Meta duopoly will claim less than 47% of digital ad spending this year. Adding Amazon brings the share above 60%. Every other digital ad publisher pales in comparison, including seemingly major players like Microsoft and TikTok.

 

B2B Drift: SaaS Marketers Say It Is Harder To Reach Customers

B2B software as a service (SaaS) marketers are being tested — 55% say it has become more difficult to reach customers over the last five years, according to a new study from Exclaimer: The future of 1:1 marketing: Exploring challenges & personalization trends.  

 

The 2024 B2C Marketing Audience Building Report

While many B2C marketers struggle with data challenges, those who utilize diverse data points achieve significantly better marketing results. This new research offers valuable insights to help you improve your audience targeting strategies through a comprehensive approach to data.

Tech Support: The Latest In Legislation Designed To ‘Level Playing Field’ For Publishers And Big Tech

The ongoing battle between Big Tech and publishers has seen some particularly bloody action recently, headlined by Google’s recent launch of AI Overviews. But you’d have to be a hallucinating, pizza-glue-and-rock-eating tool to think the content-creators wouldn’t continue to put up a fight. And in the last week, publishers have seen some big allies step up in their corner.

 

Study Finds Consumer Payment Experience is Critical for Subscription Growth

Titled “The Payment Experience Is Critical To Subscriber Growth And Retention,” the study sounds the alarm on pervasive payment challenges flatlining consumer subscription growth, with a staggering 100% of surveyed businesses acknowledging the detrimental impact of failed payments.

 

B2B Pride: Brands Sure Of Their Data Strategy Spend More And Make More

B2B marketing budgets are headed for an uptick this year: 31% of brands that are confident in their data strategies expect significant increases, versus 16% last year, according to The 2024 B2B Marketing Outlook: The Data Confidence Divide, a study from Anteriad, conducted by Ascend2. However, B2B companies face ongoing challenges with their data.  

 

How AI is Reshaping Marketing for CMOs

Marketing leaders’ jobs are becoming harder than ever. With strict deadlines, tight budgets, and fewer resources, many CMOs are turning to AI to streamline workflows and help teams produce content at scale. We surveyed over 600 marketing and creative professionals at all levels, including 80+ CMOs and marketing leaders, to find out … the impact of content demand on CMOs, how AI is transforming the way marketers work, [and] the outlook on the future of marketing for brands.

Searching AI And Low: What Google’s AI Overviews Mean For Publishers

Last week, I wrote about the rising search costs, with CPC and CPL both going up dramatically in the last year. 

There are a number of ways AI and automation can help with offsetting those specific rises, but today I want to shine a light on one particular AI use that is doing publishers no favors in terms of search.

As anyone who’s paid attention to AI news might have guessed, I’m referring to Google’s recently announced AI Overviews.

 

Google Ads Benchmarks 2024: New Trends & Insights for Key Industries

With over 80% of buying journeys beginning on search engines, it’s not a surprise that so many businesses are running search ads to capture searchers and convert them into customers. But with search engines like Google constantly changing the search landscape, and with advertising costs rising across the board, it’s important to understand how your search ads are really performing to drive the best results for your business.

 

B2B Dips Into AI: A Small Number Of Firms Try 2 Or More Use Cases

AI is catching on in B2B in a fitful way. Only 11% of brands are using AI for more than two use cases, and 38% are trying it for one, according to a new study from Bain & Company, titled “How B2B Sales and Marketing Leaders Are Getting The Most From Generative AI.” Firms with high revenue growth were twice as likely as laggards to deploy multiple use cases, by a margin of 11% to 5%. 

 

The State of Email and Automation 2024

The use of automation in email marketing programs allows for the expanded use of personalized and timely communication, enhancing customer engagement and conversion rates. Marketing professionals also consider leveraging AI and machine learning to streamline workflows and deliver more relevant content to their audience at scale. But what is working in email and automation, and what can you learn from other marketing professionals to optimize your programs this year?

The Digital Direction: Online Overtaking Newspapers, TV For Local News

A new survey from Pew Research Center is confirming what many of us in the media industry have suspected: the new king of local news is digital.

Almost half (48%) of U.S. adults surveyed said they prefer news sites or social media for getting their local news and information, up from 37% in 2018 and overtaking television (which fell from 41% to 32% in that time). 9% prefer print newspapers (down from 13% in 2018) and an additional 9% prefer radio (up from 8%).

 

Working Professionals Increasingly Support The Use Of AI Tools

Communicators are more likely to have a favorable view of agencies and colleagues who incorporate AI into their work, according to an Axios-Seven Letter insights survey. This signals that AI-supported work might not be as taboo as it was just one year ago.

 

CMO Survey Finds Gen AI Already Has Had A Profound Impact On Marketing

The good news is that a little more than a year after generative AI applications began rolling out, they have had a substantial positive impact on marketing. The bad news is that they still are only being used in a fraction of overall marketing functions. Those are among the surprising top-line findings from a just-released new edition of The CMO Survey.

 

How to Win Gen Z In 2024

[The] new survey spills the tea on a strategy that will make 8 in 10 Gen Z more likely to buy from your brand: exclusive offers that reward their lifestage.

Making Time: AI, Automation, And How Business Can Prioritize (And Optimize) Efforts

If I took a poll, I’d bet exactly 100% of us would say we don’t have enough hours in the day. 

The opinions and strategies may vary on what we’d do with any additional bonus hours, but I’m sure we’d all welcome the gift.

Small businesses in particular feel the crunch of workday-hour limitations, and a new survey by Constant Contact and Ascend2 found that most SMBs (56%) spend less than an hour of each day on marketing. Combined with the almost three-quarters of SMBs (73%) that lack confidence in their marketing strategies, it’s a formula that can snowball into bad habits, bad practice, and bad business very quickly.

 

2024 State of Customer Engagement Report

AI has proved it’s here to stay. In 2023, advancements in predictive and generative AI (hello, ChatGPT) carved a clear path for intelligent customer engagement. Now, brands can ditch the age-old method of one-to-many personalization and deliver unique experiences for every single customer. To understand how brands are adopting AI to offer fully connected experiences — and how customers are responding — we surveyed business leaders and consumers from across the world. 

 

Opt-Outs Are In: North America Leads The World In This Behavior

North America remained the leading setting for email opt-outs last year, with the U.S. accounting for 76.42% of all opt-outs worldwide, according to a new report from Optizmo Technologies. Yet the total for North America slipped to 79.29%, falling below 80% for the first time as Europe increased to 16.24%. Europe also contributed to a global hike in opt-out activity.

 

Brands Are Still Investing Big In Sponsored Content On Social Media

U.S. marketers will spend $8.14 million on social media sponsored content this year, marking 16.0% growth YoY, according to our March 2024 forecast. Although spend will rise next year to $9.29 billion, growth is slowing, as marketers spend more carefully with larger creators with whom they can establish long-term relationships.

Journalism In The Gen AI Era: The Help Newsrooms Get — And Want To Get — From AI

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winners were announced this week. And while we hope to find out more details and use-specifics about the handful of finalists in the journalism category who utilized AI in their entries — either for the researching, reporting, or telling of their submissions, as they were required to disclose — the fact that newsrooms are already using the tool is a solid sign that the technology’s capabilities are a help worthy of the hype.

 

The Use Of AI To Advance Personalization In 2024

The fusion of marketing personalization and AI offers unprecedented opportunities for small and large organizations. It enables them to tailor their marketing strategies to individual preferences at scale, fostering deeper customer engagement and loyalty while driving enhanced ROI and more impactful brand experience. But how are marketing professionals using AI to impact the effectiveness of personalization in the coming year? 

 

Software In, Software Out: The Email Systems Most Likely To Be Replaced

Marketing automation software was switched more than other systems last year, judging by Email Marketing Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide, a study from MarTech. Among the email marketers polled, 24% changed their automation software, roughly the same as the prior two years. In addition, 17% changed their CRM program last year and the same percentage took on a new data management platform/customer data platform.

 

Marketing Trends For A New Era

Increased performance expectations, a fast-moving market, and the need for better insights is creating a pressure cooker for marketers. 73% of marketers expect to face more competition in 2024, a 19 point increase over last year. Three quarters (72%) of marketers say the market will move at a faster pace this year; this is even more true for marketers at larger companies with 1000+ customers vs. smaller companies with less than 1000 employees (84% vs. 63%).

Stay Of Cookie Execution: Google Postpones Cookie Deprecation Again

Late last week, Alphabet released its Q1 2024 earnings, and amid announcements that it will be paying a dividend to shareholders for the first time and authorizing a $70 billion share buyback — and the subsequent response of investors “eating it up” and lifting Google’s parent company to a $2 trillion market cap — the Google news I was most taken aback by was the further delay of a full phase-out of third-party cookies.

 

Study Reveals The Untapped Potential of First-Party Behavioral Data In Customer Engagement Strategies

Acoustic’s commissioned study finds 75% of marketers say collecting real-time experience data is critical to the business, but less than half are currently collecting this data.

 

Perplexity Referrals To Brand Sites Growing, Data Shows

BrightEdge’s analysis shows referrals from Perplexity, an AI-driven “ask” engine, to brand sites are growing at nearly 40% month-over-month since January. It presents the first evidence that Perplexity is not used solely for generative content, but also as a search engine that refers users to sites through citations.

 

2024 Creative Digital Marketing Study Reveals Disruptive Industry Changes

Marketers who add creative assets to their content are seeing increased results. 92.2% of survey respondents this year stated that they integrated images, videos, and other creative assets into their content, which is a big increase from last year. In our 2023 SEO industry study, only 74% of marketers mentioned using creative assets — including images and video — in their content. In addition, 74.3% of respondents revealed a boost in search engine results page (SERP) rankings for content featuring creative assets.

Breaking The News: Google Removing News Links In Response To California’s CJPA

As California’s Senate Judiciary Committee waits to hear the Assembly-passed California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), Google has taken a preemptive — and some say “undemocratic” — measure to remove links to news sites in the state.

Google is calling it a “short-term test for a small percentage of California users,” enacted to see what impact the pending legislation would have on the search engine and its product experience. 

Echoing Meta’s threats before it, Google’s step is founded on the belief that the CJPA would benefit larger media conglomerates more than small publishers. CJPA bill author and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks called Meta’s threats a “scare tactic” at the time, and the criticisms of Google’s actual link-removal late last week show the tactic is striking no fear within media circles.

 

Recurly Data Signals Sustained Growth In Digital Media Subscriptions Since 2020

After streaming media subscriptions skyrocketed in 2020 as consumer behavior shifted dramatically during a global pandemic, the industry is normalizing with sustained and steady growth, according to new benchmarking data from Recurly. … The digital media and entertainment industry experienced a 124% increase in subscribers since 2020, and the digital publishing industry saw an explosive 536% increase in subscribers over the same time period.

 

Data Problems Get In The Way Of GenAI

A surprising 93% of retailers are using AI for some kind of personalization, including personalized email copy and product recommendations, according to Retail Roadblock: Lack of Data Strategy Stands in the Way Of Generative AI Progress. But data problems are holding retailers back. For instance, only 17% have a complete single view of their customers. And 49% are in the earliest stages of building or considering the creation of a complete customer data profile.

 

State Of Cross-Channel Marketing For 2024

On average, B2C marketers use at least five marketing channels to engage with their customers. 57% of marketers say finding new customers is a key focus area for them in 2024, followed by increasing engagement and loyalty (44.9%). Budget and resource constraints are a top challenge for 45.4% of marketers in driving customer engagement, followed by providing personalized experiences (39.5%).