The 10 Things You Need To Know In Advertising Today | ||
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Good morning. Here's everything you need to know in advertising today to get your morning off to a good start. 1. UK supermarket Sainsbury's has just released a Christmas commercial that blows the usually-triumphant John Lewis festive spot out of the water. The Sainsbury's Christmas ad retells the true story of troops holding a truce, exchanging gifts and playing football on Christmas Day 1914, during World War I. 2. Twitter released a chart during its analysts' day Wednesday that reveals it is forecasting $14 billion in annual revenue in 10 years, causing its stock price to rise more than 7%. But observers were confused by the new 35-word strategy statement it also put out at the same event. 3. Google's DoubleClick for Publishers ad server went down on Wednesday, costing publishers globally '$1 million an hour' in lost revenue. The server was down for almost two hours, which also brought some websites to a virtual standstill as many pages failed to load. 4. YouTube has launched a new subscription music service that lets users pay to get rid of ads. The service will also allow YouTube users to save videos to view offline and the ability to play songs in the background as they browse other apps. 5. Samsung has released a bizarre and awkward rap to present its sustainability report to the world. Choice lyrics include "Make it shine/ Let us smile/ Samsung will be there/ Global harmony with people/Society and environment/Samsung." 6. Domain "laundering" is the latest advertising fraud threat, The Wall Street Journal's CMO Today reports. Ad networks are allegedly manipulating and masking how ad inventory on undesirable sites appears in ad exchanges, to make marketers more likely to buy the space. 7. Some 75% of brands are now using programmatic, MediaPost reports. Survey results from demand-side platform Chango also found that 74% intend to increase their programmatic budgets next year and that only 9% of brand marketers have no plans to use programmatic in the future. 8. Airline KLM says it makes €25 million per year from social media, according to Econsultancy. KLM’s social media manager Karlijn Vogel-Meijer also revealed that the airline's social payments tool, which cost €3,500 to set up, now takes €80,000 per week in sales. 9. Vice has partnered with concert giant Live Nation to create a free, ad-supported music content property on teh web, mobile and TV, AdAge reports. The service will include original series, films and live events and it will be more tightly-focused on mainstream acts than Vice's existing music property Noisey. 10. Ad tech company SHIFT is among the first Facebook marketing partners to integrate with the newly rebuilt Atlas platform, AdExchanger reports. SHIFT clients can now use Facebook's data to target users in mobile apps outside of Facebook's owned apps. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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First Ebola treatment trials to start in west Africa | ||
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Geneva (AFP) - Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Thursday it would soon launch clinical trials of three possible treatments for Ebola in west Africa. The trials to be run in Liberia and Guinea give "hope for patients to finally get a real treatment against a disease that today kills between 50 percent and 80 percent of those infected," said Annick Antierens, who coordinates the investigational partnerships for MSF. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Oil Is Tanking Again | ||
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Oil touched new lows on Thursday morning, with Brent crude sinking to its lowest point since 2010. Brent lost almost $2 in the space of hours, and it is currently trading at $80.56 a barrel. It was trading around $100 a barrel just two months ago.
WTI crude suffered similar falls, dropping $1 since from its high of $77.88 a barrel this morning. At the time of writing it is trading at $76.81 a barrel.
The collapse of oil prices over the last couple of months is a symptom of both demand shortfalls due to slowing growth in key consumer countries and supply shocks from the US shale oil boom to record supply from Russia. News this morning that industrial output growth slowed in China will do little to boost the oil outlook. All eyes are now focused on the next move of oil cartel OPEC, which controls 40% of global supplies. OPEC's largest member Saudi Arabia has repeatedly dismissed rumours of a war on prices in order to combat the shale boom in the US, but the country faces a dilemma between cutting production to bolster prices or allow prices to continue to fall in order to regain market share. If OPEC does decide against cuts analysts from Societe Generale suggest that falling oil prices could act as a stimulus for the global economy. A $20 decline in oil price adds 0.26% to the global GDP after the first year of shock, according their model. Here is a long time chart, showing the crude's performance in 2014:
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