New York Times showing strong signs. Insights into the US sports rights market. Tourism New Zealand seeks global media buying partner. Reebok names global creative agency of record.
New York Times showing strong signs
Despite speculation that the New York Times is struggling, a surge in online subscriptions in the fourth quarter of 2018 has prompted the New York Times Co to set an ambitious new goal: hitting 10 million subscriptions by 2025.
It also helped send the company’s share price to a 13-year high on Wednesday.
Other strong signs point to a period of prosperity for the New York Times with company CEO Mark Thompson saying in a statement, “A strong quarter capped a strong year.
“After just three years, we are already three-quarters of the way to achieving our five-year goal of doubling digital revenue.”
Tech Central has the full article, which you can read here.
Twitter reports growth in ad revenue
Twitter’s ad revenue has risen by 24%, reaching $2.62 billion. Video not only accounted for more than half this total, but was also the fastest growing type of advertising for Twitter.
In the last quarter of 2018, the social media company reported a 23% year-on-year rise in ad revenues to $791 million, which helped the social media company mark its first full year of profitability.
Interestingly, revenue growth outpaced user growth, and looked to continue along those lines, chief financial officer Ned Segal told analysts. Monthly active users stand at 321 million but Twitter reported a 9% increase in daily active users year on year to 126 million.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey (left) said he planned to hire more ad sales people, and to focus on tackling abuse on the platform.
Read the full story on Campaign.
Amazon expects ad sales to grow in 2019
It’s not just Twitter reporting increased ad sales; Amazon has nearly doubled its revenues year on year to $3.4 billion in Q4 2018.
A survey of digital marketers confirmed by ad tech company Nanigans working with Advertiser Perceptions reported that half of US marketers at 100 retail companies that generated at least $50 million in annual digital spend expect to increase their budgets allocated to Amazon this year.
“These retail marketers already spend 14% of their digital advertising budgets on Amazon and, while that currently ranks the company third behind Google (21%) and Facebook/Instagram (19%), they say budgets for Amazon will increase by an average of 25% in 2019,” WARC reported.
Go to WARC for more on this story.
Insights into the US sports rights market
Sports rights are big business in today’s media world and an article from SportBusiness Media has provided some fascinating insights into the US market.
This market will generate $22.42 billion in 2019, making it by far the world’s biggest sports rights market, accounting for 44% of the total global sports rights market.
In honour of the Super Bowl, SportBusiness Consulting updated its US market focus – part of the 2018 SportBusiness Consulting Global Media Report, which SportBusiness Media published an excerpt from.
You can view the fascinating insights here.
The Bucket, a film by Apple for the Chinese market
On the back of declining sales in China, Apple has created a seven-minute long film shot on the iPhone XS in honour of the Chinese New Year.
The film, titled The Bucket, was made by TBWA\Media Arts Lab Shanghai and directed by prominent Chinese director Jia Zhahngke. It was rolled out across Weibo, Youku, WeChat, Douyin and Apple’s YouTube channel – and backed by an out-of-home campaign across Greater China.
The Bucket, Mumbrella reported, shows a young man heading back to the city after a CNY visit to his mother who lives in rural China. As is custom, he was given a bucket of goods to take back by his mum – something that is symbolic as well as practical.
Tourism New Zealand seeks global media buying partner
The official tourism body of New Zealand, Tourism New Zealand, has opened the pitching process for a global media strategy, planning and buying agency.
Incumbent, Blue 499, will face stiff competition as Tourism New Zealand is looking to consolidate all of the media activities into a single, core global media agency to drive “global media effectiveness”.
Mumbrella has more details, which you can read here.
Reebok names global creative agency of record
Footwear brand Reebok has picked IPG’s Deutsch as its global creative agency, after a review of the account and a pitch process.
The agency’s New York office will lead the business moving forward.
AdWeek has more details, here.
