1. “Subscription First” Strategy Transforms The New York Times

Over the past three years, the NYT downplayed its advertising and focused on strengthening its subscriber base by enhancing content offerings and launching new podcasts on games and cooking. This gambit seems to have paid-off, attracting 7 million digital subscribers and doubling its 2020 Q3 net income to $33.6 million.

2. Return on TV Ad is not Uniform for All Brands

Three Chicago professors studied the role of TV advertising for consumer packaged goods and found that ROI on TV ad is 15-20 times less effective for many brands and most brands seem to have been overinvesting in TV ads.

3. Media Agency Starcom Prepping For a Cookie-less Future

In an interview with AdExchanger, Isabelle Baas Managing Partner at Publicis-owned Starcom explains how advertisers are preparing for the phaseout of third-party cookies in Chrome and discusses the viability of various identity-related initiatives in a cookie-less world.

4. Discovery Plus to Reach 12 European Markets with Vodafone Deal

Discovery and Vodafone have signed a multi-year deal that allows Discovery TV content to reach more than 100 million Vodafone subscribers in 12 European countries.

5. Google, Alphabet Employees Unionize

A Group of more than 200 Google and Alphabet workers have announced the formation of the Alphabet Workers Union, and have committed to pay 1% of their yearly compensation toward union dues. Early last year employees of tech companies Kickstarter and Glitch had formed their own unions.
 
6. Twitter Acquires Social Podcasting App Breaker

Twitter has acquired social broadcasting app Breaker, the companies announced today via a combination of blog posts and tweets. The deal will see Breaker’s team joining Twitter to help “improve the health of the public conversation” on the service, as well as work on Twitter’s new audio-based networking project, Twitter Spaces. 

7. Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway-JPMorgan Healthcare Joint Venture is Officially Ending

A somewhat nebulous, but high-profile and potentially heavily moneyed joint venture is coming to an end: Haven, the JV created by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, is being “disbanded”, three years after its original formation. One of the main reasons is that each partner in the venture was apparently just pursuing their own very different strategic approach to their respective healthcare challenges.