D2C brands are uniquely appealing because they form and reflect their consumers’ lifestyles.  Warby Parker’s blog, for instance, details the brand’s collaboration with Ghostly, a Brooklyn-based record label, and its Pupils Project on DonorsChoose.org.  It also contains a review of Mark Greif’s book of essays, “

With this curated content and a brand name combining two characters from Jack Kerouac’s journals, Warby Parker can’t help but develop a distinctive aesthetic and cultural relevance that, by design, shapes and mirrors its consumers’ lives. 

Millions of consumers resonate with Warby Parker and similar D2C brands, seeing their values validated in these brands’ paid, owned and earned media.  When seeing D2C content, often comparable in quality to that of Travel + Leisure, GQ, Vanity Fair or Vogue, D2C consumers can feel part of a hip intelligentsia populated by the likes of Soho House members and admirers of the New York Public Library where (no coincidence) Warby Parker held one of its first fashion shows.  

This commercial success and pop cultural significance is motivated by D2C brands’ performance and brand marketing savvy.  A recent study by Toluna and Unmetric, for example, reveals that 21.4% of consumers consider an “appealing online presence” the most compelling reason to try a D2C brand.” Over 31% are prompted to purchase D2C products by social media ads, and 16.3% are prompted by ads on TV. 

These statistics don’t tell the whole story, however.  An “appealing online presence” amplified by TV and social media ads is all about projecting a vivid brand identity in which consumers see a reflection of themselves.  This merger of brand and consumer identities is a crucial competence of D2C brands -- and, more generally, brands that are beloved.  The more complete this merger, the more a brand looks and feels like its consumers, and the stronger its product-market fit.  

While strong product-market fit is required for commercial success, it isn’t sufficient.  D2C brands must “launch loudly,” notes Jesse Derris, founder of D2C-focused PR agency Derris, as quoted on the textview blog.

Launching loudly is really hard with today’s fragmented media, where many screens, including TV, mobile and desktop, compete for consumer attention.  To deal with this issue, D2C brands need to find the right consumers at the right time using expert audience forecasting tools.  

In addition, it helps that D2C brands’ ethics resonate across a variety of distribution channels, like Everlane’s and Rothy’s campaign against single-use plastics, encouraging consumers to see their own values and attitudes in their brands.

Each time they find consumer resonance, on TV, mobile, desktop, print, audio and in person, the most distinctive D2C brands generate spikes in user acquisition that catalyze step-function growth and enable investments in more brand building.  As Brian Balfour of Reforge points out in a company blog, this becomes a “growth loop.”

As a brand strengthens, new D2C consumers tell more consumers about their latest purchase — and a flywheel made of commercial and cultural momentum begins to spin.

Jeffrey Katzenberg is set to introduce mobile, short-form video platform Quibi to the advertising community in formal fashion on Wednesday, during this week’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Meanwhile, Quibi has announced that in addition to co-founders Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and Hewlett Packard, its board of directors will include Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast and former CEO of Pandora; Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments and former chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation; Ann Daly, co-founder at WndrCo Holdings and former president of DreamWorks; Harry “Skip” Brittenham, founding partner of Ziffren Brittenham LLP; and Greg Penner, founder of Madrone Capital Partners and chairman of Walmart.

Fortune broke the story. In a statement, Katzenberg described the board choices as “innovative thinkers” who know that the tech and entertainment industries “can come together to reimagine how we tell original stories and create the next era of entertainment.”

Quibi, set to launch in April 2020, has attracted $1 billion in funding from Viacom, Disney and other investors since it began development last year.

The streaming service, which will be available only on mobile phones, will charge users $4.99 per month for content with advertising, and $7.99 without advertising.

The premium content (Quibi has said that it will pay up to $125,000 per minute for some scripted programming) will include serialized programming from high-profile directors, including Paul Feig, Steven Soderbergh and Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”), series featuring stars such as Idris Elba, and short, thrice-daily, personalized news programs.

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Amazon, Facebook, and Google will account for 43% of the $129.34 billion in U.S. digital ad spend in 2019, according to a recent study, coming in lower than the estimate of 68% from eMarketer.

While all that money continues to stream into digital, marketers have concerns that these three companies limit their advertising options -- especially search advertising -- and are looking for alternatives, according to findings from Factual.

Of the 43% who have concerns, 14% are extremely concerned, 20% are very concerned, 32% are moderately concerned, and 19% are slightly concerned. Some 15% are not at all concerned.

Factual commissioned Lawless Research to survey 700 brand and agency marketers regarding location data strategies between April 11 and May 5, 2019, to get a sense of their thoughts on privacy and the emerging ad channels they tend to favor.

Agencies spend on average 50% of their advertising budget with Amazon, Facebook and Google. Marketers spend about 41%.

It makes sense that companies with larger ad budgets allocate a greater share. About 46% of agencies and brands with an advertising budget of $50 million or more annually spend 60% of their budget with these companies.

Some 65% are looking for alternatives to improve advertising outcomes, although nearly half say the return on investment with the three companies is higher than on other platforms.

About 78% of those who are very or extremely concerned about limited advertising options are seeking substitutions. The irony of it all is that the best alternatives are mostly owned by these three companies such as Google’s YouTube, Amazon’s Twitch, and Facebook’s Instagram.

And while some marketers seek alternatives, others say they plan to place ads in traditional media, such as TV, radio, and print as well as online banners, SMS, video, search engines, streaming radio, blog sites, and location data vendors.

Marketers also are beginning to use more location data, while mobile at 81% is the top channel followed by TV at 49%, digital-out-of-home at 47%, voice and connected speakers at 45% and automotive at 28%.

It would make sense that as tools are deployed more widely to protect against desktop ad fraud and to improve brand safety, criminals would move to the mobile environment.

After all, that's where digital ad dollars are flowing -- and that is where publishers may not yet have added protection to their sites.

This would certainly be the takeaway from the DoubleVerify Global Insights Report for 2019. The biggest increase in the report is for brand safety incidents, which are up 196%. To put that into perspective, the rate of brand safety issues affected just 0.8% of mobile ad placements two years ago, whereas now it is 5.2%.

It has to be pointed out that even this figure is a little flattering because it is a global average that is exceeded in the EMEA region, where brand safety incidents are averaging out just about the 8% mark.

Again, there is even more bad news closer to home when global figures for all ad fraud are drilled down into so the more local numbers can reveal themselves.

The UK takes the unfortunate crown of being the digital advertising market that is most prone to criminal activity, with a fraud rate of 2.4%. This is around 50% higher than Germany and twice that of Italy. However, to put the figures into perspective, the US is higher still, with an ad fraud rate of 3.4%.

The figures clearly show that it is not so much the country that fraudsters are targeting but rather the size of the opportunity.

With the UK way out ahead as the biggest digital advertising market in EMEA, it will obviously attract the highest levels of fraud, rather like the US's rate being nearly double that found in neighbouring Canada.

If this all sounds a little depressing, one silver lining is that viewability is up on mobile, compared to desktop and this is being driven within apps. Average desktop viewabiity of 56% leaps to 70% within mobile apps and desktop video viewability similarly booms from 64% to 73% in mobile apps.

The takeaway? Your ads, particularly video ads, stand a better chance of being viewed on mobile, particularly in a mobile app. However, as budget flows in vast quantities to this relatively new channel, it is not a surprise to hear that fraud rises and so too does a brand's exposure to unsafe placings and fraud.

Health apps, wearable devices like Fitbits and genetic testing kits would be subject to new privacy regulations, under a bill proposed Friday by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

The proposed Protecting Personal Health Data Act would task the secretary of Health and Human Services with crafting regulations to boost the privacy of health data.

The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 already requires health care providers, including doctors and hospitals, to protect consumers' privacy. But the senators suggest that HIPAA -- which predates social media, apps and devices like Fitbits -- hasn't kept up with technology.

The lawmakers point to recent reports about data sharing by health apps, including a Washington Postarticle stating that the pregnancy tracking app Ovia sold data to employers.

Ovia reportedly said it complies with HIPAA, and that it anonymizes and aggregates the data before sharing it with employers. But privacy experts told the Post that people could be re-identified if Ovia data was cross-referenced with other information.

The journal JAMA Network Open also recently reported that many health apps transmitted data to Facebook or Google, without making disclosures to consumers.

“New technologies have made it easier for people to monitor their own health, but health tracking apps and home DNA testing kits have also given companies access to personal, private data with limited oversight,” stated Klobuchar, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. “This legislation will protect consumers’ personal health data by requiring that regulations be issued by the federal agencies that have the expertise to keep up with advances in technology.”