Advertiser Associations Set New Diverse Media Investment Guidelines

Last week, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) released new guidelines intended to “help those marketers who are interested in supporting diverse suppliers but are still sitting on the sidelines and not sure where to begin.”

The report, entitled “Guidelines For Getting Started When Investing With Diverse Media Companies,” offered 11 guidelines to directly address what the report calls “a gap between interest and investment — between intent and action” where large companies aren’t investing in diverse suppliers “in any meaningful way.”

 

When Writing For Busy Readers, Less Is More

The average person receives dozens or even hundreds of messages — emails, text messages, and so on — each day, and the average professional spends nearly one-third of their workweek reading and responding to emails. Those numbers don’t even account for all the other communications that professionals receive outside the workplace. For busy readers, handling this torrent of information and messages is like living in an endless game of Whac-A-Mole. Highly relevant updates about health and school can inadvertently get overlooked or whacked with the delete button. And yet there is a distressingly widespread misconception among writers that more is better.

 

Peacock’s Trick To Keep Subscribers Coming Back? Emails — Billions Of Them

Addicted to checking your email? Streaming services — yes, streaming services — might be betting on it. The annual churn rate across streamers in the US in the 12 months ending in June averaged 47%, according to Parks Associates, and consumers report taking longer than ever to find shows to watch, meaning streamers are pressed to find ways to keep viewers from canceling their subscriptions. And there’s a relatively simple channel that some media companies are tapping into as part of their efforts to try to keep viewers plugged in week after week: The humble email inbox. … More broadly, every single premium subscription streamer saw churn rates in June 2023 increase compared to the year prior — with the exception of Peacock, which saw churn rates decline 2%, according to data from Antenna.

 

AI Aggravation: Job Loss, Privacy Are Among Marketers’ Concerns

AI will help brands boost productivity. But it may also lead to job loss and other problems, judging by AI In Marketing and Communications, a study from The Conference Board in collaboration with Ragan Communications. Of the companies polled, 82% say AI will improve productivity, perhaps a lot. But 40% fear it will reduce the number of jobs, and some say it will reduce them a great deal.