5 Breaking News Headlines: Digital Marketing CliffsNotes (February 2020)

Have you kept your New Year’s resolution to stay up with the latest digital marketing news? If not, scan these expertly curated breaking news headlines and summaries; then read what’s most relevant to you:

Google recently announced a new plan: Within the next two years, it wants to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome. Justin Schuh, Google’s director for Chrome engineering, said, “This is our strategy to re-architect the standards of the web, to make it privacy-preserving by default.” He added, “There’s been a lot of focus around third-party cookies, and that certainly is one of the tracking mechanisms, but that’s just a tracking mechanism, and we’re calling it out because it’s the one that people are paying attention to.”

NBC Peacock doesn’t want to be like Netflix or Disney+. The new streaming service simply wants to complement cable and show why NBC still reigns and the value of linear TV. Launching July 15, Peacock plans to provide a nice balance of both live programming and current NBC shows and popular older TV shows and Universal movies, available through three pricing tiers: Peacock Free, a $5 a month ad-supported option (with special benefits for Comcast customers), and Peacock Premium, a $10 a month ad-free option. “This is a very exciting time for our company, as we chart the future of entertainment,” said Steve Burke, chairman of NBCUniversal. “We have one of the most enviable collections of media brands and the strongest ad sales track record in the business. Capitalizing on these key strengths, we are taking a unique approach to streaming that brings value to customers, advertisers and shareholders.”

Facebook’s plan to bring ad products, such as Status Ads, to WhatsApp in 2020 is on hold, and the team once working on it has been disbanded. When asked about this development, a WhatsApp spokesperson said, “Ads in Status remains a long-term opportunity for WhatsApp. We believe it is a great way for people to discover a business that’s important to them, although we do not have a more specific timeline we can provide. At the moment, the team is focused on building new features to help businesses achieve success, as well as providing payments in a number of countries. For example, late last year, WhatsApp launched catalogs to help businesses showcase their goods and services right within the app.”

As we touched on in a prior blog, VIZIO is taking the plunge into ad sales. But now here’s why: It wants to have more control over advertising and the advertiser and user experience. What can VIZIO offer advertisers? According Mike O’Donnell, senior vice president at VIZIO, it’s something they want most: rich multilevel data. He explained, “If you just want to find incremental audiences tied to reach and frequency, we’ve got that. We’ve got data that can tell you what VIZIO audiences are watching. We can tell you what they aren’t watching too, so you can easily target the people you missed in order to drive incremental reach. We  can also provide digital type solutions. And by that I mean, our data gives advertisers the ability to reach very specific audiences. So if you need to buy against say ‘dog owners in Minneapolis,’ we’ve got solutions that can deliver that specific audience to you.” Mike also shared how VIZIO will cater to users: “On a more macro level, we know that more and more consumers are moving to streaming, so we want to make sure we have all the right content available for them, both from a subscription standpoint, and from a free ad supported standpoint. As cord cutting grows, we know that most of our customers are going to be looking to us to supply them with free ad-supported content. So our goal here is to be able to give that to them by making our platform very attractive for those sorts of apps. It’s good for them, it’s good for us, and ultimately, it’s good for our customers.”

Netflix has always refused to sell advertising, but here are the reasons why. Earlier this month, CEO Reed Hastings said building a meaningful advertising business and challenging Google, Facebook, and Amazon would be too expensive. He said, “There’s not easy money there. They’re integrating so much data from so many sources … To keep up with those giants, you’ve got to spend very heavily on that and track locations and all kinds of other things that we’re not interested in doing.” Reed gave another reason Netflix doesn’t want to get into the ad game: It doesn’t want to deal with ad targeting and its increasing regulations. However, though Netflix isn’t selling advertising, it’s still working with advertisers in clever ways, through product placements, brand partnerships and consumer products. Now that you’re back in the know with these digital marketing breaking news headlines and CliffsNotes, recommit to your New Year’s resolution and keep it. Always get the latest breaking news headlines and our expert take on them in these three easy ways: Follow our blog, get our president Jay Friedman’s latest insights and advice (free book here!) or work with us.