• Next Year and Beyond: The State of the Ad Economy

The Big Forecasters have spoken, and after some December revisions to their ad economy outlooks, that ever-constant ebb of optimism and flow of recession concerns has painted a new forecast that, well, is not too far from what was predicted at the start of 2022.

• The Definitive Digiday Guide to What’s In and Out for Advertising in 2023

Adland saw its fair share of ups and downs this year. For a comprehensive look at what this rollercoaster ride has been — and what it means for 2023 — take a look below. And let us know what we missed.

• Is Publishers’ Pivot to Software Over?

The case for a broad revenue mix in publishing has never been stronger. With the events market still on shaky ground after coronavirus lockdowns, digital ad rates tanking and rising cost-of-living pressures squeezing online subscription sales, the last thing any publisher needs to be at the moment is a one-trick pony.

There is no doubt these are tough times, but, this too will pass and those that survive will be left thinking hard about where to go next.

• Chrome Users Ask Appeals Court to Take Up Privacy Battle Over ‘Incognito’ Mode

A group of Google Chrome users are asking a federal appellate court to intervene in a privacy lawsuit alleging that the company wrongly collects data from users who browse in incognito mode.

In papers filed Friday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, counsel for the users say U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers judge incorrectly refused to allow the users to seek monetary damages on a class-wide basis. The users are asking the 9th Circuit to hear an immediate appeal of Gonzalez Rogers’ ruling.

• Facing a Cookieless Future, Marketers Trust Performance-Driven Paid Media

There’s no denying that the prospect of a cookieless future is concerning to many. For years, Magazine Manager Blog has written about various cookie concerns (and the data-driven strategies to address them).

New data from Mediaocean’s 2022 Market Report and 2023 Outlook confirms much of that, with 37% of the more than 600 respondents saying a lack of preparedness for a cookieless future (“and other data deprecation relating to consumer privacy”) was the largest area of concern for their media and marketing initiative.

• Google Says Automation Will Support Advertisers in a World Without Cookies

Google has offered an in-depth look at how automation will pick up where cookies leave off when targeting ads without browser cookies. The company is collaborating with the advertising industry to transition to new private ad technologies that eliminate support for third-party cookies in Chrome during the second half of 2024.

Joey Trotz, director of product management for Privacy Sandbox at Google, in a blog post, describes how the post-cookie project will change its advertising platform once cookies are no longer used. Turns out the project relied highly on automation.

• Data in Advertising: How Publishers Retain User Trust

As more users expect transparency, control, and choice over how their data is used, how can publishers build consumer trust, protect user privacy, and create a more responsible web? Becky Dutta, VP of Customer Success at Permutive, and Mathew Rance, Head of Commercial Data at Immediate Media, met as part of the Responsible Web Roadshow to discuss how publishers are addressing the issue…

• Ad Market Falls for 6th Consecutive Month in November, Signaling Potential Recession

The U.S. ad market fell 6.7% in November, marking the sixth consecutive month of declines and giving impetus to the notion that the ad industry is in recession, according to MediaPost’s analysis of data from Standard Media Index’s (SMI) U.S. ad market tracker.

• Ad Spending Forecast: Cloudy With a Chance of Recession

To be clear, things are bleak — online advertising’s uncurbed euphoria slammed into a harsh reality this year. The layoffs and closures across the media industry are proof of that phenomenon.

Granted, it was inevitable because the rampant growth spurt online advertising has been on was always going to run out of steam. This slowdown is providing a much-needed reality check of sorts for swathes of the market. Inevitable because the rampant growth spurt online advertising has been on was always going to run out of steam.

• Google Apologizes for Ad Manager Outage, Raising Questions on Dependency

Google apologized last week for the “inconvenience” it caused online publishers when its ad managing platform stopped serving ads and prevented sites from generating revenue and advertising agency representatives from serving ads for brands. This once again raises questions about agencies’ and brands’ dependency on Google advertising services.

• Recirculation: How It Can Have a Major Impact on Both Traffic Growth and Revenue for Publishers

Recirculation is a real-time analytics metric that compares the number of people on a given page to the number of people who have continued their journey from that article to another one on the same site. In other words, it’s the percentage of readers that make it past the first article of their visit. While some readers will naturally engage with multiple articles per visit, most need extra help getting deeper into a site. In fact, across the Chartbeat network, 89% of readers will leave a site after engaging with just one article. While that might be a discouraging figure at first glance, it’s also a testament to the importance of Recirculation in your engagement strategy.

• Gartner: Uncertainty Clouds CMO Prospects for 2023

Marketers have had a rough go of it in 2022, and Gartner’s CMO predictions for next year don’t herald happier times. One of the biggest factors pressuring the role remains the economy. While some of the inflationary pinch has eased in recent months, fears a recession will hit next year endure. Marketing departments are often among the first targeted for cutbacks in a downturn.

• Publishers: Search Traffic Continues to Outpace Social, and Other Global Audience Insights From Q3

The third quarter of 2022 saw mobile traffic and engaged time remain largely unchanged while loyalty increased and search traffic slipped in some regions. While most regions saw a decrease or no change in their percentage of pageviews from Search, it’s worth noting that the channel as a whole is on the rise. Raw traffic from Google in particular has risen in 2022, while Facebook traffic has remained flat.

• Surprising Beneficiaries of Ad Slowdown: Small Publishers, Traditional Media

If there is a positive story in the ad-spending downgrades being issued this week by the major agency forecasting units, it’s that ad budgets are becoming far less concentrated among the big digital platforms and the biggest beneficiaries are smaller digital publishers and — surprise — traditional media.

• Ad Revenue Forecast Shrinks for 2023 Amid Economic Uncertainty, Magna Says

Manga predicts that 2023 will be a slow year for U.S.-based advertisers, with sales growing just 4% to $330 billion. This is largely due to the lack of cyclical and political ad spending. When this type of spending is excluded, the firm predicts ad spending will grow 6%, with market recovery in the second half of the year. Following a small uptick in ad revenues in 2022 for traditional media owners, Magna’s predicts that ad sales for publishing and television will shrink by 3% and 4% respectively in 2023.

• Meta Threatens to Remove News From Platform if Journalism Bill Passes

Meta Platforms on Monday threatened to remove news from its social networking service if Congress passes the controversial Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.

“If Congress passes an ill-considered journalism bill as part of national security legislation, we will be forced to consider removing news from our platform altogether rather than submit to government-mandated negotiations that unfairly disregard any value we provide to news outlets through increased traffic and subscriptions,” spokesperson Andy Stone said Monday on Twitter.