📰 Jumbotron

The 5 Digital Marketing must-knows this week

1. Macy's sells ads to survive the ‘retail apocalypse’. Macy’s is cashing-in on it’s digital and physical assets with third-party advertising. This even includes the jumbotron, outside it's flagship store in New York. Macy's is one of a growing number of examples of retailers launching media businesses, which includes Walmart, Target & CVS. (The Hustle↗️)

Bonus 👉: From Lowe’s to Kroger, why traditional retailers are making media a must-buy for marketers (The Drum↗️)

2. A new Meta study found demographic targeting outperformed interest targeting in terms of brand awareness. For the same budget, demographic audiences reached almost 100% more people than the interest audiences. Interest audiences only saw a 22% improvement in driving brand awareness - which is not sufficient to make up for the lower reach. (Social Media Today↗️)

3. Spotify has sights set on much more than music streaming. Spotify is the latest to test the TikTok style video feed. Beta users can like or skip vertical full-screen music videos on the ‘Discover’ tab. Shopify also just acquired an audiobook company and launched video podcasting. (Tech Crunch↗️)

4. Instagram is starting to consolidate it’s video products: Video, Stories and Reels. To that end, Instagram confirmed they are testing 60-second stories and has started to automatically show regular videos uploaded as Reels. These moves could soon see feeds comprised more of video a-la TikTok. (Social Media Today↗️)

5. Advertisers can now reach Telegram’s privacy-focused users. An ad-free subscription option will follow. Advertisers can serve 'sponsored messages' in public Telegram channels with 1,000+ subscribers. The ads are context-based, meaning advertisers can only serve ads based on the content of the channel, not user data. (The Next Web↗️)

Snippets for the road

  • TikTok surpasses Instagram in terms of weekly GenZ usage

  • Amazon tells customers to keep some items instead of returning them

  • YouTube released the top 10 videos and creators of 2021

  • eMarketer: Brands are most interested in working with micro-influencers