Streaming video companies have belatedly recognized that advertising can be more profitable than subscriptions, and are pushing paid subscribers to switch. Amazon just introduced its own typically arrogant twist on the concept, unilaterally placing all Prime Video customers in an ad-supported plan unless they choose to pay $2.99 per month more than their current $14.99 monthly Prime member fee.
Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content. But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines. Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results. We’ll see if competitors do the same.
Some surveys suggest that most companies have unified their customer data but many more show the industry has a long way to go. This Forrester study for NIQ falls into the latter group, with just 24% of respondents reporting they can track customer behavior across ecommerce and in-store retail channels. Nearly two-thirds (63%) has eleven or more data sources for omni-channel measurement.
Media mix models (MMM), originally developed in the 1960’s, have undergone a resurgence as new technologies make them easier to execute and click-based attribution becomes less credible. But evaluating MMM brings its own challenges. Australia-based Mutinex offers a vendor-neutral Open Source MMM Validation Framework which is now available for free to North American marketers and agencies.