Internet Ad Revenue reaches record high, Google shows signs of greater collaboration, and are we measuring US well-being well enough?

Caught my Eye...

• Internet advertising revenues reached a record-high of $225 billion, increasing by 7.3% year-over-year overall (YoY) between 2022 and 2023. IAB’s Annual Advertising Revenue report found that Q4 saw the highest growth rate of 12.3% from the year prior (4.4%), with revenues rising to $64.5 billion. Retail Media revenues showed 16.3% YoY growth in advertising revenues, reaching $43.7 billion in 2023. Key e-commerce players are all expanding their retail media platforms to enable future growth. Video advertising revenue experienced double digit (10.6%) YoY growth, rising to $52.1 billion in 2023. Forty-two percent of this revenue was generated from streaming (CTV/OTT). Audio advertising also saw a robust expansion, growing 18.9% to reach $7 billion. It is still the fastest growing channel, albeit at a slower pace than last year. After a slowdown in 2022, social media advertising revenues have rebounded with 8.7% YoY growth in 2023, increasing to $64.9 billion in 2023. This can in part be attributed to the continued proliferation of social media and creator marketing growth across multiple platforms and new social media forms.
• The rise of data collaboration and use of external data sources highlights the need for robust privacy and compliance measures. In this evolving data ecosystem, businesses are turning to clean rooms to share data in  low-trust environments. Clean rooms enable secure analysis of sensitive data assets, allowing organizations to unlock insights without compromising on privacy. Google recently announced that data clean rooms are now generally available in Google Cloud Console via BiqQuery. Clean Room Features generally include; limiting joins to prevent unintended or unauthorized connections, enforcement of privacy parameters at the user level, restrictions on output, and provide usage metrics for monitoring data owner and contributor usage. Most notably - Using data clean rooms in BigQuery does not require creating copies of or moving sensitive data. Instead, the data can be shared directly from your BigQuery project and you remain in full control. Any updates you make to your shared data are reflected in the clean room in real-time, ensuring everyone is working with the most current data. (this is a big plus)
• Do the GDP and Dow Reflect American Well-Being? The standard ways of measuring economic growth don’t capture what life is like for real people. A new metric offers a better alternative, especially for seeing disparities across the country. In response, we created a new metric: the CORE Score, a multipart measure of well-being. The central goal of the economic system should be to improve “the wealth of our lifestyle, the wealth of how we live.” The CORE Score is broken down into four central elements: economic security, economic opportunity, health and political voice. As compared with GDP and the Dow, initial findings paint a very different picture of how the country is doing. Nationally, there has been little improvement in American well-being since our data begin in 2005. Health scores have climbed, mostly because health coverage has expanded, but these gains have been offset by a decrease in our measures of economic security, which include a trove of credit bureau data on household finances. This helps to explain why many Americans are so dissatisfied with an economy that looks strong according to traditional metrics.

Other Reading…

• Best Buy and CNET are combining their ad inventory (BestBuy)
• Chase launches first bank-led media network (Search Engine Land)
• The Trade Desk’s OpenPass Adds Rewards as it pursues wider adoption (AdExchanger)
• Warner Bros Discovery launches data platform for better ad-targeting (Reuters)
• Meta introduces Llama 3 as most capable open source LLM to date (Meta)
• Bytedance prefers TikTok shutdown in US if legal options fail (Reuters)

Against the Grain:

• AI advances may frustrate U.S. climate goals as electric demand surges (Axios)
• Why Time’s Taylor Swift Feature was marked Brand Unsafe (AdWeek)
• Sick of toxic screentime? Dumphones are having a moment (Axios)
• The Dystopian Future of TV is AI_Generated FAST TV Garbage (404Media)
• Inside the crisis at NPR (NYTimes)

Chart of the week: 95% of Americans know their Zodiac sign. (The Harris Poll)