Got a TV tie-in for your marketing story? It'll increase your chances of being read by our Marketing Daily audience.

That was evident when we looked at  2022 stats for a bunch of combined beats: alcoholic beverage/health/entertainment/technology/partial CPG. TV and its celebrities figured in more than half of the 10 most-read stories of 2022, coming in on a par with their frequency in the previous year’s rankings.

A pure entertainment marketing story -- Amazon Prime Video’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” promoting its fourth season last winter by ‘taking over’ two venues in New York City’s Bryant Park -- was the second most-read of the year.

Netflix’s “Cobra Kai” made the list at no. 4, via a Coors Banquet sweepstakes that tied in with series character Johnny Lawrence’s propensity to drink that beer onscreen.

Tucked between “Mrs. Maisel” and “Cobra Kai,” at no.3, was “Theranos Whistleblowers Appear At Scene Of Elizabeth Holmes' Last Hurrah.” Readership of this story, about Erica Cheung and Tyler Shultz appearing at a medical techie meeting, was likely helped by their portrayal -- along with Theranos founder/CEO Elizabeth Holmes herself -- in Hulu’s limited series “The Dropout.”

Three stories involved iconic TV actors promoting products: Kaley Cuoco (long known for "Big Bang Theory") leaving HBO Max’s “The Flight Attendant” and joining Diageo’s Smirnoff Red, White & Berry vodka as “chief summer officer” (no. 10); Ted Danson  helping “Consumer Cellular Fight Competitors' Mobile Oversell” (no. 9); and Courtney Cox teaming up with Clos du Bois to fight ageism in wine marketing.

The Cox and Danson stories, both rare instances of 50+ representation in non-medical advertising, also represent another prevalent aspect of this year’s top 10: stories focused on specific cohorts.

This category includes the year’s most-read story, “Wine, The Wallflower: Industry Honchos Plan Joint Marketing Push,” about the wine industry planning a category-wide campaign in response to diminishing interest in wines from 21- to 34-year-olds.

Zeroing in on the youngest of that grouping, Marketing Daily readers learned that “Campari, Drizly Target The Newest Drinkers: Gen Z” (no. 6).

“Molson Coors, A-B Launch Latino Campaigns” came in at no. 7.

As was the case last year, when “Kahlua Stirs It Up With Routine-Busting Spots, Espresso Martinis” made no. 4 on the list with “no dollar figures, no celebrities, no movies, no TV shows,” the 2022 list again features one outlier: “P&G Sets First National Campaign For 'People-Friendly' Insecticide” (no. 5).

Compared to 2021, the year 2022 seemed almost peaceful in email marketing.  

There was nothing as dramatic as last year’s launch of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection. Instead, pressure continued on the privacy front in a more insidious way. 

Here are some of the big stories of 2022, and what they mean. 

Email Marketing Is Slipping?

A shocking report from ANA showed that email, long known as producing the best ROI, has fallen to third, behind direct mail and SMS. Forgive us if we’re skeptical: direct mail, with its prohibitive postal/printing costs? But there it is, and it is only one of several studies that say email is being challenged by SMS and social media. Don’t worry, email teams, your jobs should be safe. The channel remains a workhorse, driving ecommerce, financial services and even auto sales. It is especially critical on the back end—for triggered and transactional messaging.    

Marketers Face A Plethora Of State Privacy Bills 

When marketers wake up this Sunday morning, the California Privacy Rights Act, a bill that removes the B2B exception and requires that so-called data brokers communicate directly with consumers to offer an opt-out, among other things, will have taken effect. Many firms are unprepared, lacking automated systems for handling Data Subject Access requests (DSARs) from consumers.  

And the CPRA is only one of several state laws that are coming. “Unfortunately, we’re not yet headed to a singular national privacy law,” said Chad Engelgau,  CEO of Acxiom, earlier this year. “It’s potentially a trillion-dollar issue due to the cost of compliance for businesses to constantly update their practices going from state to state.”

States are not the only enforcers: A growing number of companies are also taking on this good work. For instance, Edison Mail gives consumers a one-tap way to eliminate unwanted emails. And DuckDuckGo offers a service that detects and removes hidden trackers in emails. 

Email marketers are generally safe from regulatory menace if they have consent and allow the user to opt out. This advantage will grow as brands restrict themselves to first-party and zero-party: email addresses are voluntarily given. 

But there are many other privacy risks—for example, data breaches. Brands can end up owing millions to governments and class-action litigants if they let breaches occur.  

Vendors Keep Buying Each Other

Maybe the merger action wasn't on the level of Intuit buying Mailchimp last year. But there were several mergers in 2022, like Mastercard buying Dynamic Yield, Clevertap purchasing Leanplum, and Validity taking over MailCharts. The result of this trend is that clients have fewer vendor choices, but are gaining dashboards that cover everything. 

At the same time, there were several stories about VC funding rounds. For example, MessageGears raised $62 million and Movable Ink snared $55 million. The downside of taking venture capital is that the recipients do not really own themselves. And when they manage to get acquired, they have to share the proceeds with their VC benefactors. 

Apple Embraces BIMI 

We’re getting tired of predicting growth for BIMI (brand indicators for message identification) every year. But there was one big breakthrough in 2022: Apple started rolling out BIMI in its iOS 16 and macOS Ventura releases. Apple thus joins Yahoo, AOL Fastmail and a host of email support companies -- Gmail embedded BIMI in all of its inboxes last year.  

To explain: BIMI allows brands to place their logos in the subject lines of DMARC-authenticated emails. This will enable them to stand out—no small thing given the fact that consumers are complaining about the vast number of marketing emails cluttering their inboxes. One businessperson told the Washington Post he was getting 800 emails a day, mostly “marketing spam.” The brand logos will reassure consumers and make the emails stand out in the mix. As for DMARC, there are hints that it will become mandatory, according to Forbes.  

Surprise: Firm Offers AMP For Email

To end on a happy note, marketing platform Insider announced it is supporting AMP (accelerated mobile pages) for email, a platform that allows consumers to make purchases, experience products, and interact in other ways within emails. 

The email field has been slow in taking on AMP—one expert called it “dead on arrival.” But many marketers are moving toward interactivity in emails. To make the case for AMP, brands can use  it to offer web-like experiences within an email, including click-to-submit NPS surveys, newsletters with collapsible content, swipe-able gallery experiences, travel booking, and zero-party data collection.

In another seeming technical advance, Twilio is offering an authentication method that lets brands quickly move users through registration without passwords, thanks to deterministic mobile carrier signals. What can be next? The technology is there for brands ready to use it in a compliant way.  

WeightWatchers knows it isn't easy to lose weight. To make the process less onerous, it has launched a new campaign with the tagline: "Return to feeling good."

The three spots in the "Returns" campaign were created by Maximum Effort, Ryan Reynolds' agency.

The ads will run across broadcast, social and digital.

The campaign's focus is that guilt and shame aren't helpful in any weight-loss effort. Rather, it suggests that WeightWatchers can teach you how to eat the foods you like.

“This campaign is the first of many brand acts where we will be showing up in new and unexpected ways, all while remaining true to our brand heritage,” said Amanda Tolleson, Chief Marketing Officer at WeightWatchers.

She added it "evokes a simple, yet provocative belief that has been at the heart of this brand for six decades and is also a truth worth celebrating: you can eat what you love, and still lose weight. Our hope is that our target consumer feels seen, celebrated and inspired.”

Maximum Effort's client work includes "Deadpool," Aviation Gin, Mint Mobile and Wrexham AFC.

Separately, in August, virtual pay TV service FuboTV struck a major TV/content deal with Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort Productions, which included starting the Maximum Effort Network, a linear channel that will run on FuboTV.

The Alabama Media Group is killing the print editions of The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times and the of Mobile. All three will cease on February 26, 2023.  

This is part of a restructuring by parent Advance Publications that also included New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, NPR writes. 

Tom Bates, president of Alabama Media Group, says the company has seen great. growth on the digital side, NPR continues. 

“In an effort to deliver more news try to deliver more news to more folks and follow where people were going, we've made the decision to stop printing next year," Bates says.  

Bates continues that the combined circulation of the three titles was 260,000 a decade ago, but not is down to around 30,000. In contrast, AL.com pulls a million people a day, NPR continues.  

Mint Mobile unveiled a new holiday ad this week featuring company owner and Hollywood hyphenate Ryan Reynolds. 

To punctuate the brand’s position as a much less expensive alternative to the big mobile carriers Reynolds is seen in the spot offering three months of free Mint Service plus a pair of pants with hip-to-ankle-sized pockets to carry all those savings. 

One lucky caller (to 888-MintPockets) will also receive those big-pocketed pants. 

The new ad (which can viewed here,) is the latest in a series of holiday spots from the mobile phone company that includes Yard Sale and Epic Holiday .

With connected TV/streaming pretty much universally expected to be a prime focus for evolution and advertising investment growth in the year ahead, here are some specific insights and predictions from leading media, ad-tech platform and smart TV OEM executives.

Jess Breslav, chief customer officer, Index Exchange: In 2023, more CTV media owners will unlock the value of contextual targeting — including genre, channel, network, series and TV rating information — to increase transparency for media buyers and curate inventory that matches buyers' marketing strategies. 

The industry undoubtedly needs to continue to innovate to deliver the optimal buying and viewing experience. We’ll see improvements in ad podding. Signaling and standardization will come to fruition and accelerate a shift in media spend in 2023. 

With the ecosystem maturing, we’ll also start to see more media buyers take advantage of the full programmatic ecosystem and leverage additional buying models for CTV, such as inventory packages, to scale with confidence. These curated packages give marketers access to exclusive premium inventory while still receiving the benefits and flexibility of the open market. 

Hunter Terry, vice president solutions, consulting and CTV commercial lead, Lotame: “Amazed and confused” are the prevailing sentiments around CTV measurement. There will not be a single solution, at least for the time being. In fact, the industry will become even more compartmentalized and disjointed, which will make measurement more difficult. We see it every week when a big streamer or OEM wants to set up its own offering accessible only via its platform. Case in point: Apple just announced they are creating their own DSP specifically to focus on their CTV offering. 

Every streaming service is going to try to create its own unique platform. Why? Data. Take LG, for example. They can sell inventory within LG TVs or send the data they collect off into the ecosystem and onto other CTV devices. Any service with customer data is going to package it and sell it — following the example of retail media networks. 

Meanwhile, [despite having missed the reach guarantees it gave to some advertisers for its ad-supported launch], Netflix will ultimately surprise everyone with “good advertising.” It’s got the people, pipes and partners to hit it out of the park. Measurement won’t be a stumbling block either, as TV hasn’t done a bang-up job of metrics, and the open web is in disarray.

Will consumers balk? Likely not. Getting a break on price due to ads may be enough of a carrot to stay. With so much original inventory, Netflix has a real advantage, and more runway in global users than newer platforms.  

David Wiesenfeld, lead strategist, media and entertainment, TransUnion: Interactive TV will gain a real foothold in 2023. This won’t be the real-time, two-way exchange between viewers and broadcasters that some envision, but producers and distributors are exploring ways to leverage the one-to-one digital nature of streaming TV to allow consumers to respond directly to what they see on the screen.

FuboTV has integrated sports betting into its UI, allowing users to place bets on live games or simply play along and earn points by picking winners, without risking any money. Similar technology could be used to receive other “inputs” from viewers, such as purchase interest in an item worn by a TV character (closing the loop on brand integration) or an opportunity to participate in a game show from your living room. 

Lynette Kaylor, senior vice president advertising sales, FuboTV: More than ever, data will be king. As budgets tighten, advertisers will need to become more efficient with their buys and have smart data strategies. Efficiencies come from reducing waste and increasing targeted media buys — investing in the audiences that are most inclined to buy your product or service instead of mass reach. There will also be a greater need for transparent attribution and measurement to show the value of audience-based buys.

First-party data will continue to become increasingly important as more privacy legislation comes into play. Both brands and publishers need to own their relationships with their consumers. 

Matt Spiegel, executive vice president, media and entertainment vertical, TransUnion: With more premium services entering the market, consumers will have to choose where to spend their household budgets — and that could propel mid-tier platforms to consolidate.

Thirty-one percent of 2,612 Americans surveyed by Recurly in March planned to cancel some subscription services this year. According to Paymnts.com, between October 2021 and May 2022, the average number of retail product subscriptions among baby boomers and seniors slipped from 2.2 to 2.

Other generations saw steeper drops: Gen Z and Gen X subscriptions fell from 4.9 to 3.6, and millennials’ from 5.6 to 4.7. It is likely they will gravitate toward [cheaper, ad-supported] subscription streaming services as well as free streaming services, making niche players acquisition targets for both upstream and downstream services. 

Sean Doherty, CEO, Wurl: Samsung and Roku were the first device makers to embrace FAST (free, ad-supported streaming). Now, many of the top 30 smart TV manufacturers have introduced FAST offerings. I predict that all smart TV manufacturers will go all in with FAST, and we will see nearly 100% device adoption by the end of 2023.

During the 2008 financial crisis, the advertising industry experienced a steep downturn, with one exception: mobile. The smartphone had just hit the market, leading to a steady growth in mobile advertising. Now, as we find ourselves in another economic slump, I predict CTV will persevere in 2023, with growth in connected TV devices more than making up for a decline in ad fill rates.

TV and entertainment appear to be recession-resistant. And with Hulu, Netflix and all the major streamers now offering less expensive versions with ads, there are new, scalable ways for brands to reach lean-back consumers. Smart brands and agencies will realize that the streaming screen is where the eyeballs are.

Frans Vermeulen, vice president strategy and market development, media and entertainment, TransUnion:  CTVs are giving smartphones a run for their money. U.S. smartphone time per day is expected to come to three hours and 19 minutes this year. Daily time with connected devices — mainly CTV but also game consoles, set-top boxes such as Roku, Blu-ray players and wearables — will reach one hour and 47 minutes in 2022 and rise to one hour and 57 minutes in 2024.

While CTV ad spending remains much less than that of traditional TV, the gap is closing. This year, U.S. advertisers will spend $18.89 billion on CTV, up 33% over 2021. 

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah will take on new data-protection laws in 2023. The laws apply to the collection and processing of personal information.

Whether this is based on the Internet Protocol (IP) address coming from the computer or mobile phone or device is not entirely clear.

Inside Performance reached out to Chris Coomer, vice president of data analytics and insights at NP Digital, in November. 

"The laws created by each state usually only apply to legal residents of that state," Coomer said, adding that his comments come from an organizational perspective, not a legal one. "Most, if not all, businesses will err on the side of caution, seeing as it can become incredibly complex and expensive to determine who is a resident of each state. In addition, there is a lack of clarity on whether or not data housed in California is subject to CCPA/CPRA, even if you aren't a California resident."

NP Digital will be one of the organizations that errs on the side of caution, he said, and will take the most restrictive and therefore protective approach to data privacy, along with dozens of other organizations. NP Digital is based in San Diego, California.

Google already offers publishers data-protection terms related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe.

Now it will offer service provider terms to supplement those existing laws, effective January 1, 2023. The service provider terms will be incorporated into Google’s existing contracts via the data-protection terms, with no action required by the advertiser.

Data processing in Ad Manager, by default, is not restricted, and personalized ads will be shown to users on publishers' sites or apps.

In order for the ads to adhere to CCPA guidelines, settings will need to change to restrict data processing and only show non-personalized ads to eligible users in California.

The settings do not control data marketers may be sharing outside of accounts through processes such as mediation.

If marketers choose “Don’t restrict data processing,” it selects the advertising partners that are eligible to receive bid requests for users that Google determines are located in California. It’s not entirely clear how Google does this, especially for people who travel from one state to another or have a residence in California, but do not live in the state full-time, like myself.

When publishers enable restricted data processing, Google will limit the ways it uses data and begin serving non-personalized ads only.

Non-personalized ads are targeted using contextual information, such as city, but not ZIP or postal code, geo-targeting based on current location, and content on the current site or app or current query terms.

Google disallows all interest-based audience targeting, including demographic targeting and user list targeting when in restricted data processing mode.

Google did not respond to a request for additional information at the time this post was published.

Publishers will need to decide when and how to enable the restricted data-processing mode, based on the company’s compliance obligations and legal analysis, according to Google. (More details here on two common scenarios.)

This column was previously published in Inside Performance on November 17, 2022.

Citing security concerns, the U.S. House of Representatives this week joined 19 states in banning the Chinese-owned app TikTok from government-owned devices.

The new restriction, announced by the House's Chief Administrative Officer, applies to elected officials as well as their staff.

“TikTok is not allowed on House mobile devices,” the Chief Administrative Officer said in a memo issued Tuesday. “If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it.”

The Senate hasn't taken a similar step -- at least not yet.

House Representatives and their staff, like the rest of the public, can continue to use the app on their personal phones.

The House's move comes several days after lawmakers passed a spending bill that bans the social video app from government-owned phones used by executive agencies.

At this point, the decision to prohibit House members and staff from running the app on government devices shouldn't come as a shock. If anything, the bigger surprise is that the Senate hasn't also ordered the app removed, given the reports that surfaced this year.

Among other blockbuster revelations, journalist Emily Baker-White (formerly with BuzzFeed, now at Forbes) reported in June that TikTok “repeatedly” shared users' private information with Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.

TikTok's parent company then compounded its problems by accessingBaker-White's location history, in an attempt to figure out whether she was in the same general locale as ByteDance employees who could have leaked information to her.

Forbes reported on the spying in October, and TikTok confirmed the report last week.

Earlier this month, a trio of lawmakers proposed legislation that would ban TikTok, along with other social media apps under the control of countries including China and Russia. It's not clear whether lawmakers are willing to go that far, especially given that a countrywide ban could infringe the First Amendment rights of TikTok's millions of U.S. users. 

Meanwhile, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is currently in negotiations with ByteDance that could result in changes to how the company handles U.S. users' data. As of today, however, it doesn't appear that a final agreement has been reached.

TikTok said earlier this month that it was implementing plans to “further secure” the platform in the U.S. The company hasn't yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment regarding the new House ban.