As part of its exclusive series on the YouTube Ecosystem, Next in Media spoke with John Terrana, President, Americas at VaynerMedia, about why most clients aren't racing to lock up much inventory beyond sports this year, and the 'weirdo' spot YouTube still finds itself in.

💡Takeaways:

• 🏈 Sports Media Dominance: Live sports, particularly NFL and NBA, are highly competitive and fast-moving in the media marketplace, unlike other content which is experiencing slower movement and caution from buyers.
• ⚠️ Post-Upfront Caution: Following the upfronts, there's a prevailing sense of caution, with buyers proceeding slowly due to concerns about inventory value, viewership trends, macroeconomic conditions, and political environments.
• 📊 Increased Optionality and CTV/OTT Shift: Clients are seeking increased optionality for next year, prioritizing sports while shifting other media spend towards CTV (Connected TV) and OTT (Over-The-Top) to maintain flexibility.
• 📺 YouTube's Misunderstood Potential: YouTube, especially the proper app on TV, is still largely misunderstood and underutilized by many in terms of its reach as the number one app on smart TVs, its creative potential, and its targeting capabilities.
• 🔁 Always-On Creator Engagement: The trend for creators and influencers is moving from campaign-by-campaign activations to an "always-on" strategy, continuously sourcing and testing new talent, similar to the shift seen in performance marketing.
• 🛍️ Rise of Social Commerce and Live Shopping: Social commerce, particularly through platforms like TikTok Shops, is a major growth area and a significant bet for agencies, driving substantial commercial outcomes and offering branding opportunities through integrated commerce units in feeds.

🎙 Guest: John Terrana

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: VuePlanner

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Next in Media sat down with Chloe Wix, Head of Global Product & Commercial Growth at Spotify at the company's beach venue in Cannes, to talk about AI-generated audio ads, why Spotify is leaning more into monetizing non-subscribers, and whether the 'background' medium can graduate into the video ad market.

💡Takeaways:

• 🎧 Shifting Perception of Spotify's Business Model: While initially perceived primarily as a subscription service, Spotify is increasingly demonstrating its commitment to advertising, investing significantly in its ad-supported side.
• 🎬 Rise of Video Podcasting: Spotify observes a strong user desire for deeper engagement with podcasters, extending to visual elements like set design and mannerisms. 
• 🔄 Breaking Traditional Media Plans: Spotify's integration of both audio and video advertising is disrupting conventional media buying, where teams are often segmented for audio, video, or social. 
• 🤝 Demand for Native and Upfront Deals: Brands continue to value authentic relationships with creators, leading to an increase in annual, upfront deals with major podcasters. 
• ⚙️ Automation as a Key Goal in Advertising: Spotify's number one goal on the advertising side is automation. 
• 📊 Enhanced Measurement Solutions: Spotify is heavily investing in robust first-party measurement tools (e.g., Spotify Ad Analytics, Pixel) and deepening partnerships with third-party measurement providers like Claritas, Podscribe, and Arts.ai to provide comprehensive data and analytics for advertisers.
• 🤖 AI in Ad Delivery and Creation: Spotify is leveraging AI for ad delivery, allowing advertisers to set goals (e.g., maximize spend, unique reach, purchases) and have ads delivered to users most likely to take a desired action. 

🎙 Guest: Chloe Wix

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: Elemental TV & VuePlanner

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Next In Media spoke with Ryan Mayward, SVP of Retail Media Sales for Walmart Connect, about the company's expansion of its retail media capabilities beyond its own platforms. Walmart Connect is focusing on off-platform strategies through partnerships in CTV (NBC Universal, Disney, Paramount Plus), social media (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest), and new integrations like Vizio. 

💡Takeaways:

• 🌐 Off-Platform Retail Media Expansion: Walmart Connect is significantly expanding its retail media capabilities beyond its owned platforms, focusing on reaching Walmart customers wherever they consume content, including CTV and social media, to drive sales outcomes. 
• 📊 Full-Funnel Measurement and Consideration Metrics: The focus is moving towards understanding how each touchpoint contributes to overall sales, emphasizing "consideration" metrics like attributed visits to product detail pages or brand shops, which are effectively driven by offsite media like CTV and social. 
• 📺 Strategic CTV Integrations: Walmart Connect is actively integrating with major CTV players like NBC Universal, Disney, and Paramount Plus to reach Walmart audiences and measure sales outcomes. 
• 🤝 Social Media Partnerships for Sales Outcomes: Walmart Connect has integrated with top social platforms such as Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, observing strong results in reaching Walmart customers and measuring sales outcomes from content consumption and live experiences on these platforms.
• 💡 AI-Enabled Creative Tools for Advertisers: Walmart Connect is developing AI-enabled creative tools, starting with display and moving into video, to lower the barrier to entry for smaller and medium-sized brands, making it easier for them to advertise on platforms like TV.
• 📈 Expansion to Non-Endemic Brands: Beyond brands selling products in Walmart stores, Walmart Connect is increasingly working with non-endemic advertisers from sectors like financial services, travel, quick-serve restaurants, and automotive, signaling a broader market play in retail media.

🎙 Guest: Ryan Mayward

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Next in Media and Sean Downey of Google discuss YouTube's evolving role in connecting brands with creators, highlighting new platforms like Brand Connect and "Peak Points" to foster authentic partnerships and drive full-funnel outcomes for advertisers. They also touch on YouTube's expansion into live events like the NFL's global broadcast and the growing potential of shoppable content across all formats.

💡Takeaways:

• 🤝 Creator-Brand Connection: There's a growing emphasis on connecting brands with authentic creators to leverage the creator's voice and trusted relationship with their audience for brand messaging. 
• 📈 Trust in Creators: A significant insight is that 98% of users trust YouTube creators more than any other platform or even the brand itself when seeking recommendations. 
• 🔄 Full-Funnel Approach on YouTube: YouTube serves as a comprehensive platform where consumers engage in searching, streaming, scrolling (especially with Shorts), and shopping. 
• 🔗 AI-Powered Connections & Advertising: Technology, particularly AI, is crucial for scaling connections between brands and creators and for optimizing ad placement to reach the right audience. 
• 💡 Authentic Storytelling: The most effective brand integrations with creators are not scripted but allow the creator to authentically incorporate the brand message into their voice and content. 
• ⏱️ Real-time Trending Content: Brands are looking to tap into trending moments and creators who are currently "popping". 
• 🏈 Beyond In-Game Ads for Live Events: For live events like the NFL, the strategy extends beyond traditional in-game ad units to encompass the surrounding cultural and content moments.

🎙 Guest: Sean Downey

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: VuePlanner

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Next in Media spoke with Dr. Mark Grether SVP & General Manager, PayPal Ads, on why he thinks the company's 'transaction graph' may be even more powerful than some retailers' data for advertising, and why there's nothing to worry about with a company that has so many people's banking information to use that data for ad targeting. 

💡Takeaways:

• 🌐 The Power of Transaction Graphs: PayPal's advertising strategy is built on its "transaction graph," which captures consumer spending across 30 million merchants globally, offering a much broader and deeper understanding of purchase behavior than single-retailer data. 
• 🔗 Cross-Retailer Attribution: Unlike traditional retail media that operates in silos, PayPal can provide closed-loop attribution across all merchants where a brand's products are sold. 
• 🛍️ Beyond Single-Category Insights: PayPal's transaction graph enables connections across diverse spending categories (e.g., sporting goods, groceries, travel). 
• 🔒 Trust and Data Security in Advertising: Despite handling sensitive financial data, PayPal emphasizes that trust and data safety are central to its advertising business. 
• 🤝 Agency Collaboration: Advertising agencies are actively "leaning in" to PayPal advertising because of its ability to offer a cross-media view and help optimize and plan campaigns across many outlets in their ecosystem.
• 📈 Evolution to Offsite and Full-Funnel: PayPal is naturally expanding into "offsite" ads and full-funnel marketing due to its existing transaction data across numerous merchants. 

🎙 Guest: Dr. Mark Grether

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: Rembrand

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Mike and Emily Riley talk media agency paralysis, Amazon vs Trade Desk, Paramount Drama and Sydney Sweeney Soap.

💡Takeaways:

• 📉 Agency Turmoil and Risk Aversion: Ad agencies are experiencing significant internal issues, including layoff fears, client shifts, and restructuring (e.g., WPP). 
• 🤝 Innovation Through Established Channels: While direct sales to agencies are difficult, ad tech innovation is still happening by "hitching wagons" to established platforms. 
• 🛍️ Retail Media's Rise: Retail media, particularly through platforms like Amazon, is a significant area of opportunity for ad spending. 
• 🧱 Amazon's Walled Garden Advantage: Amazon is increasingly influential in the ad tech space, acting as a "walled garden" with rich shopping data.  
• 🔍 Google's Potential Shift and Amazon's Search Play: The potential breakup of Google (e.g., selling Chrome) could open up the search market significantly.
• 📉 Legacy Media's Struggle and Live Content's Value: Traditional media companies like Paramount are facing significant challenges due to outdated business structures and internal conflicts.  
• 📱 Mobile-First TV Consumption: Younger generations are increasingly watching TV content on their phones, highlighting a shift in consumption habits.  
• 🤖 AI's Role in Creative - Automation vs. Innovation: There's a debate about AI's role in creative advertising. 

🎙 Guest: Emily Riley

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: LinkedIn

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Canvas CEO Paul Woolmington on why everyone needs the NFL, and why brands need to weigh the value of running ads in live games vs. becoming part of the religion of sports fandom - with creators' help.

💡Takeaways:

• Sports Dominance & Cultural Anchor: Sports have become a dominant force in media, serving as a critical aspect of live content and a shared cultural experience that transcends demographics and connects communities. 🏈
• Rise of the Creator Economy: The upfronts are increasingly focused on the creator economy, highlighting the significance of authentic voices and emergent stars on platforms like YouTube, which is a top viewing platform across all video. 🌟
• The "Anthropologist in Media": The current media landscape is at a fascinating "inflection point" with the maturation of new platforms and the pivots of incumbent players, making it an interesting time for media "anthropologists" to study evolving trends. 🧐
• Shift to Outcome-Based Planning: There's a strong industry shift towards outcome-based planning and focusing on outcomes across the entire marketing funnel, moving beyond just bottom-of-the-funnel metrics. 🎯
• Importance of the "Data Storyteller": A new and vital discipline is emerging: the "data storyteller," who can connect disparate data points, explain complex algorithms to C-suite executives, and facilitate holistic integration across various media disciplines. 📊

🎙 Guest: Paul Woolmington

🎤 Host: Mike Shields

📺 Sponsor: Rembrand

🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Emily and Mike talk about the ad world's new obsession with models, and whether brands are too trusting of AI ad buying.

💡Takeaways:

• The resurgence of Marketing Mix Models (MMMs) is a significant topic in Ad Tech, with varying opinions on their effectiveness, especially when pitted against AI-driven tools from major platforms like Meta and Google. 📊
• Historically, MMMs were expensive and data-intensive, primarily accessible to large advertisers like P&G for high-level media allocation decisions. 💰
• Today, MMMs are becoming more affordable, partly due to advancements in AI, making them more accessible to a wider range of companies. 🧠
• While AI optimizers from large platforms can be beneficial for small advertisers, larger, more complex companies and their agencies may find completely handing over control problematic. 🔑
• The debate between traditional, high-level MMMs and more granular, data-driven approaches highlights the need for advertisers to balance macro and micro strategic dials. 🎛️
• The evolution of content consumption, particularly among younger generations who prefer video platforms like YouTube and TikTok for news, indicates a necessary shift for media companies towards more diversified, visually-driven content formats. 📱

🎙 Guest: Emily Riley
🎤 Host: Mike Shields
📺 Sponsor: Elemental TV
🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

Next in Media spoke with Conor McKenna, partner at Luma Partners, about what's held ad tech back from exploiting the creator economy, and why creators themselves - along with a new competitive dynamic among the tech platforms - may lead the industry in a whole new direction.

💡Takeaways:

• Creator Economy's Spending Gap 🤯: Despite excitement and increased brand activity, there's a significant gap between time spent with creator content and advertising spend in that area.
• Media Consumption Convergence 📺📱: Major platforms like Spotify, Meta, YouTube, and CTV are increasingly converging around video formats and distribution, with creators at the core. YouTube is a prime example, competing with both TikTok (YouTube Shorts) and traditional TV (YouTube app on smart TVs).
• Shifting Platform Dynamics 💪: Creators, especially mega-creators, are gaining more leverage over platforms as platforms compete for their presence. This reduces the ability of platforms to control creators as much as they once did.
• Creators as Cross-Platform Marketers 🌐: Creators are strategically moving their audiences across different platforms and monetizing them in various ways, using short-form content as a top-of-funnel strategy to drive engagement on other channels like podcasts or Substack.
• Challenges in Creator Ad Buying ⚖️: Buying creator content at scale is difficult due to workflow complexities, the need for authenticity, and challenges in measuring ROI compared to traditional ad channels.
• AI's Role in Creator Measurement 🤖: AI is expected to create more opportunities to measure creator spend in unique ways, such as tying it to user acquisition costs or understanding content context for better value.
• Evolution of Creator Monetization 💰: Creators are increasingly demanding a larger share of monetization directly, rather than relying solely on platform payouts, which could drive demand for new tools and technologies.
• Brands Driving Change 📈: Major brands like Unilever are significantly increasing their investment in social and creator content, pushing the industry to figure out better measurement and integration for these channels.

🎙 Guest: Conor McKenna
🎤 Host: Mike Shields
📺 Sponsor: VuePlanner
🎬 Producer: FEL Creative

The ad industry is seeing major shifts, with Microsoft stepping back from Xandr amidst the rise of AI and the complexities of CTV advertising at the forefronts. 

Meanwhile, the value of local advertising is in question, as it struggles to keep up with the evolution of digital platforms and measurement.

💡Takeaways:

• Microsoft Exits Ad Tech (Again): 📉 The tech giant is sunsetting Xandr, citing a shift towards AI. Is this a strategic pivot or another retreat from the complex ad tech landscape? 🤔
• AI is the New Ad Focus: 🤖 Microsoft frames its exit as a dedication to AI-powered advertising. Expect more industry buzz (and investment?) around AI's role. 🚀
• Xandr's Legacy Fades: 👻 The significant investment and evolution of AppNexus, now Xandr, sees a quiet end, highlighting the volatile nature of ad tech acquisitions. 💨
• CTV Upfronts Remain Key: 📺 Despite industry shifts, the upfronts are still a major event and source of discussion, showcasing the importance of traditional TV in the media mix. 💰
• Advertiser Pushback on Platform Demands: 📢 Advertisers are increasingly willing to challenge platforms on content decisions, asserting their right to choose where their budgets go. 💪
• Shifting Power Dynamics: 👑 There's a sense that Elon Musk's influence in DC might be waning, potentially emboldening advertisers to push back against platform pressures. 🏛️
• Content Neutrality Matters: ⚖️ The principle of separation between content and advertising decisions is being reaffirmed by advertisers.