1 Google, FB attract a fifth of global ad spend
(Julia Kollewe in The Guardian) Google and Facebook attracted one-fifth of
global advertising spending last year, nearly double the figure of five years
ago, research shows.
Online advertising has overtaken television to
become the world’s largest ad medium, according to data and analysis agency
Zenith. Twitter is the fastest-growing media owner, increasing ad revenue by
734% between 2012 and 2016. Internet-only media companies are grabbing the
biggest slices of the online advertising market, while traditional news
publishers have fallen far behind and been forced to make cutbacks.
Google, owned by parent company Alphabet, is by far
the biggest media owner in the world and attracted $79.4bn in ad revenues in
2016, three times more than the second-largest, Facebook, which pulled in
$26.9bn. The previous year, Alphabet took $67.4bn of ad revenues and Facebook
$17.1bn.
Together, the two companies accounted for nearly 20%
of global advertising spending last year, up from 16.3% in 2015 and 10.6% in
2012. The largest traditional media owner is US broadcasting and cable
television company Comcast, which was third with $12.9bn in ad revenues in
2016, up from $11.5bn the year before.
Despite its large share of the ad market, Google
faces a growing boycott from major advertisers including the UK government,
Marks & Spencer and McDonald’s, and has promised an overhaul of its
advertising policies. Many of the companies involved in the boycott discovered
their advertising spend was being used to place banner ads over YouTube videos
from groups such as Britain First, indirectly funding extremists.
Aside from Alphabet and Facebook, there are five
pure internet media owners in the ranking: Baidu, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon and
Twitter. Between them, the seven digital platforms generated $132.8bn of
internet ad revenues in 2016, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all
internet ad spend, and nearly one-quarter of total ad spending.
2 Twitter plans 24-hour news stream (BBC) Twitter is
working with media firm Bloomberg to create a 24-hour rolling news channel for
the messaging service. The live video
stream will be made up of original programming as well as feeds from Bloomberg
bureaus.
The deal builds on the live-streaming deals Twitter
has done with others that spreads content via the social network. The deal could
also help Twitter compete more with giants such as Google and Facebook, which
already make a lot of money from video ads.
Bloomberg's chief executive Justin Smith said the
video stream would be "broader in focus" than its existing output. He
said it would build on the habits of many Twitter users who send tweets as they
watch live events.
Twitter's chief operating officer Anthony Noto said
the stream would be designed for mobile audiences so people can focus on it
when they see something interesting to them. In the first three months of 2017,
Twitter broadcast about 800 hours of live video. Many of those streams were
connected to specific events.
3 Empowering women through shoes (Jessica Abo in San
Francisco Chronicle) Brooklyn mom Nicole Shwirtz decided she wanted to do
something to help women with the challenge of finding shoes with the right size
and width.
This month, Shwirtz launched a Kickstarter campaign
for her line, NicoNine. Says Shwirtz: “I took classes at New York’s Fashion
Institute of Technology and continued with one-on-one workshopping at the
Brooklyn Shoe Space. I learned everything from pattern-making to lasting. There
are so many steps that go into making a pair of shoes.
“All my shoes come in half sizes, 5 through 13, and
in narrow, medium and wide widths. It's all made by hand, in Brooklyn. My first
style, The Athena, comes in two color variations and is my modern take on the
ankle boot. It actually takes about 20 hours and 20 individual steps to make a
single pair.
“For the consumer, the brand makes available more
sizing options than most other brands. As a person with narrow feet, I always
felt cheated by the one-size, one-width model. I wanted to empower women of all
shoe sizes and widths to find a better fitting shoe for an affordable price.
“On the shoe production side, once the Kickstarter
is successfully funded, all shoes will be made to order, by hand, at the
Brooklyn Shoe Factory, which is a women-owned, minority-owned factory. They
focus on small-batch manufacturing and hire and train talent through a
non-profit organization called CEEDS, which employs underserved immigrant women
to provide them with meaningful work and fair wages.”
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