Steel Recaps August’s Top Marketing News of 2024

As a service to our clients and partners, Steel summarizes the top stories in marketing and advertising each month. Please reach out to Kirsten Cutshall for more discussion on this month’s marketing news or with anything that is on your mind. We would love to hear from you!

Video Transcript

I am Kirsten Cutshall with Steel Advertising. It is August 26th, and here’s your top marketing news in under 5 minutes.

First, a federal judge’s ruling found that Google “is a monopolist” and has raised prices while degrading their ad product.

Here are the top three things marketers will want to know from the judge’s 277 page ruling:

1. Google’s market share in search has stifled competition. Google’s share was at nearly 90% by 2020, with Bing’s market share at less than 6%. The judge observed that Google’s distribution agreements with device makers limit the development of competition.
2. Google has artificially raised ad prices. The judge observed that Google adjusts its ad prices through multiple techniques including artificially raising the bid of the runner-up to put pricing pressure on the top bidder. The judge also observed that Google avoided criticism from advertisers for price increases by avoiding transparency. The combination resulted in misleading customers to believe incorrectly that the prices were a reflection of natural market fluctuations.
3. Google has “degraded” its ads product. The judge wrote that Google’s search text ads product has “degraded” in two ways: Advertisers don’t receive as much information in search-query reports as they previously have, and advertisers can no longer opt out of keyword matching – a feature that about 25% of advertisers had been using to improve results. The result is less options for advertisers to optimize performance.

Net net, the ruling offers some validation to some media buyers’ discussions of Google’s rising costs and increased difficulty achieving previous levels of performance. Google intends to appeal the ruling, but hopefully, we will see some increased transparency or corrective measures in response to the negative publicity.

Next, the Paris Olympics have revolutionized advertising inventory around televised events.

In today’s fragmented media landscape, it’s increasingly rare to find programming that unites large audiences. However, NBCU’s cross-channel approach to the Olympics has brought audiences back together and created a multitude of ways to be part of the conversation.

NBCU’s strategy extended beyond traditional TV and streaming, creating an expansive ecosystem for advertisers. By partnering with influencers and platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and Overtime, NBCU offered unprecedented programmatic ad purchasing into a shared public moment. This multi-platform approach returned the opportunity for brands to be part of a large shared cultural moment that unites today’s fragmented audiences.

The Paris Olympics saw a 77% increase in daily viewership over the Tokyo Games across multiple platforms. This rebound in viewership signals that major events are again bringing people together and creating a common experience.

Marketers, keep an eye on media companies crafting similar multi-channel opportunities around events like bowl games, awards ceremonies, and holiday programming. These strategies could offer cost-efficient ways to achieve breakthrough moments in your markets.

Finally, single sign-on solutions, or SSOs, are rapidly transforming how consumers access the internet, and they’re becoming a key tool in for marketing strategy.

Increasingly popular SSOs like Duo, SecureAuth, and JumpCloud allow users to log in to multiple platforms with just one set of credentials, simplifying the user experience. For marketers, these solutions also offer valuable insights into online activities, making them an alternative to third-party cookies.

As privacy regulations tighten and third-party cookies become less reliable, SSOs provide a streamlined way to gather first-party data. This data can then be used to buildout customer profiles and optimize ad targeting.

However, some users are concerned that SSOs could enable large tech companies to consolidate data, creating another privacy issue similar to cookies.
For marketers, balancing ease of use with ever evolving privacy concerns will require monitoring public sentiment and understanding the feelings of your particular audience.

Well, that’s it for today. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk about these topics or anything marketing. Have a great week!