Facebook plans sweeping changes to newsfeed

Facebook is planning sweeping changes to its newsfeed, as Mark Zuckerberg pledges to help users have more meaningful social interactions on the platform by prioritising posts from friends and family at the expense of those from publishers. Mr Zuckerberg said users would see less public content “like posts from businesses, brands and media”. This content would be prioritised based on whether it encouraged interactions between people, rather than “passively read”.

read more

Amazon now has a $1 billion ad business

Amazon is making good on its promise to eat advertising. In its third-quarter earnings report today, the e-commerce giant said it saw “other” revenue, which is mostly composed of ad sales (and to a much smaller extent, its credit card business), grow 58 percent year over year to $1.12 billion. That’s a slight increase from the growth rate in the prior second quarter, when it grew 53 percent year over year

read more

Luxury magazines finally face digital headwinds

The luxury magazine market, for so long a well-heeled haven from the turmoil facing the rest of the print media industry, could be about to confront the same headwinds battering other magazines and newspapers. Analysts say that glossy magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair are starting to see a shift in readers and advertisers to online social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. But they are also being hit by forces specific to the industry that has for so long offered them protection.

read more

YouTube controversy shakes up digital advertising as brands pull adverts

Over the past five years, Google and Facebook have cut a conquering swath through the market for digital advertising, snatching ever more business from legacy media companies, such as print newspapers and magazines. But a growing scandal involving the inadvertent placement of ads next to extremist content on Google’s YouTube video has raised questions about whether the balance of power is about to shift again.

read more

Forget Facebook and Google: The ad world thinks this tech giant is ‘terrifying’

The mad men and women of the ad industry have plenty of reasons to toss and turn at night. Money is increasingly trickling from television commercials to digital media — a market that Facebook and Google currently have in a duopolistic chokehold. Inter-agency competition is at a fever pitch. Unconventional upstarts are eating their lunch. If Don Draper were around today, there’s a good chance he’d work at Facebook. But it’s not internet advertising giants that keep the industry’s top chief up at night. Nor is it his three-month-old daughter. It’s…Amazon?

read more