JAN 5 | What Stole My Attention This Week
What Stole My Attention This Week. A distillation of the most interesting things that happened in creativity, culture & commerce.
2024 predictions, Pop-Tarts acting like idols, Zuckerberg sells a helluva lotta stock, Netflix potentially pivoting on games.
Strawberry, The Pop-Tart Mascot, Is A Star
Anthropomorphic characters have had a resurgence of late, think Duolingo’s green owl Duo and his following on TikTok. And the charm that a character can bring hit hard at the Pop-Tarts Bowl at the end of last year.
As our own David Suarez predicted for 2024, humor will re-emerge as a preferred tone amongst the best advertisers. Some shitty things happened in 2023 and 2024 has a lot on the docket - wouldn’t it be nice just to make some people smile? When Strawberry unveiled himself to a perfectly-timed Taylor Swift song and later happily toasted himself as a celebratory snack, the brand managed to steal attention for minutes. It was irreverent, innocent, and memory-making.
Deepwater Predictions Are Ones To Watch
Speaking of 2024 predictions…Deepwater Asset Management released their 2024 predictions after 8.5/10 of their 2023 predictions were accurate.
Three of Deepwater’s predictions are around Apple; 1)Apple will bring generative AI to Siri 2)Apple will not announce any additional devices in the Vision product line and 3)Apple will acquire Peloton. This isn’t the first time this prediction has been made, but coming from Deepwater gives it more weight.
Other notable predictions? Reddit will be acquired for its data. the IPO market will return to 2019 levels. And maybe a few investments to consider.
Zuckerberg Sold $428M of Meta Stock
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sold Meta stock every day during the last two months of 2023, right as the stock price rebounded. Previously, he hadn’t sold a dime since November 2021.
Unclear what his plans are for the cash but we have heard he’s building a $100 million compound in Hawaii, complete with an underground bunker and its own food and energy sources.
Netflix Reportedly Weighing How to Monetize Games
Two years ago, Netflix announced their ambition to be a destination for must-play games, which are currently free on the platform as part of the strategy to keep users coming back. Now, it sounds like that could change.
According to the WSJ, Netflix is considering how to generate money from their games. In two years, Netflix launched 40 games, including Grand Theft Auto Trilogy - the Definitive Edition, Football Manager 24 Mobile, and Storyteller. Monetizing the experiences would be a big pivot for the streamer.
“We want to have a differentiated gaming experience, and part of that is giving game creators the ability to think about building games purely from the perspective of player enjoyment and not having to worry about other forms of monetization, whether it be ads or in-game payment,” Netflix Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters told investors in April.
No decisions have been made, but the debate demonstrates the constant struggle even many marketers face - balancing a flawless customer experience and spend/monetization.
Dec. 15 | What Stole My Attention This Week
What Stole My Attention This Week. A distillation of the most interesting things that happened in creativity, culture & commerce.
This week, we focus on developments in AI as it relates to advertising.
A lot of developments in AI this week that have a direct impact on our industry.
OpenAI Strikes Deal To Bring Current News To AI Tools
OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, has struck a deal with Axel Springer, which operates a number of German and U.S. media outlets. The large majority of what you get out of ChatGPT is drawn from a knowledge base that wrapped in 2021, due to its training process.
This relationship means using vetted journalistic data to train the intelligence model and ChatGPT will also provide attribution to news publishers and links to full articles in its responses.
In a statement, the two firms said the new arrangement "explicitly values the publisher's role in contributing to OpenAI's products" and marks a “significant step” in both firms‘ commitment to “creating new financial opportunities that support a sustainable future for journalism."
Court Dismisses Sarah Silverman IP Case, Favoring AI Firms
Comedian and actress Sarah Silverman brought a case against Meta arguing that its AI systems are an infringement that is only made possible by information extracted from copyrighted material.
“This is nonsensical,” the U.S. District Judge wrote in the order. “There is no way to understand the LLaMA models themselves as a recasting or adaptation of any of the plaintiffs’ books.”
This ruling, together with a federal judge ruling against artists who argued that AI tools using the billions of images on the internet as training material constitute copyright infringement, creates a major precedent for our industry. Without being able to produce evidence of AI-created material being identical to copyrighted work, courts seem to be seeing the cases as insufficient.
What has yet to be decided is the impact this has on AI generated content being used commercially.
3 Execs Fired From Sports Illustrated After AI Scandal
Sports Illustrated was found to be publishing content “created by” AI but passed off as real human authors. Staffers and readers were outraged. Sports Illustrated pass the blame onto a third party content provider. Now, a majority investor will step in as interim CEO.
Trivago Uses AI to Halve Global Transcreation Time
Trivago is launching a new global campaign this week with a 30-sec spot, using AI to adjust visuals and vocals for 10 diff”erent markets including the U.S., Denmark, Canada and Mexico.
While I am a big proponent of our industry using AI for efficiency purposes, Trivago seems to be dancing on a thin line of using AI in place of making progress on representation. This quote from their CEO in particular made me cringe a bit; “The AI makes it more authentic, where you suddenly have a spokesperson you can relate to much better without huge effort,” said Johannes Thomas.”
“Without much effort” - at what point does not hiring an actor from a different culture cross the line from efficiency to inappropriate? It’s reminiscent of the backlash Levi’s received when they said they would be using AI models to promote diversity.