Vox Media and The Washington Post are pouring resources into their respective CMSes, Chorus and Arc, hoping to carve out a dominant position among publishers and brands.
| In today's top stories, learn about how a CMS war between Vox Media and The Washington Post is heating up and see why Allbirds might be popular in the ad industry, but not cool anymore. Read more below. Vox Media and The Washington Post are pouring resources into their respective CMSes, Chorus and Arc, hoping to carve out a dominant position among publishers and brands. To its credit, HQ trivia has made millions of dollars in revenue over the last year, unlike many consumer app startups that leave that for much later. But HQ is in a bind to secure its future with no buyer in view. At the moment it's pushing in-app subscriptions. Allbirds has been popular with agencies, where a relaxed approach to fashion ala Silicon Valley has been on the rise. But has it gotten too popular to be cool anymore? Other things to know about We are adding to our editorial team. We're looking for a media reporter to cover the big stories of a business in a constant state of change. Learn more and apply here. For brands that are looking to drive both incremental users and profit, partner marketing might just be the answer. But this innovative strategy can add a plethora of new complexities — which can present challenges without proper guidelines and tracking measures in place. Sponsored by Tune. | | |
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howdy! howdy! | Modern Retail | | As customer fatigue sets in, subscription retailers lean on flexible terms and personalization | | As subscription startups grow up, they’re finding that they constantly have to add more flexibility and variety to their offerings in order to grow their customer base. Startups like Bark, Stitch Fix and Rent the Runway built their value proposition on the fact that they offered more flexible terms than traditional subscription services that arrived like clockwork on the first of the month, and required 30 days notice to cancel. | | |
| Sponsored by GumGum | | What a Subway scandal taught an ad exec about brand safety | | In 2015, when Subway’s most prominent spokesman suddenly became a reviled felon, Ken van Every’s team hit on a blunt solution: avoid all things Jared. Van Every, then working for a software provider on behalf of the sandwich chain, decided to employ a keyword blocking strategy. “If any page on the site said the word ‘Jared,’ that was going to be avoided by this web campaign,” he explained. | | |
howdy! | Sponsored by Kenshoo | | The state of paid search: How marketers are managing their programs | | Search practitioners now have a broad choice of tools to drive performance. Some use the “native” tools offered directly by search engines, while some use third-party platforms. In a comprehensive new State of the Industry report, we surveyed practitioners to discover how they rate the value and performance of the search industry’s offerings. | | |
howdy! | Modern Retail | | With b8ta, Toys 'R' Us is pitching a new experience to wary brand partners | | Toys ‘R’ Us is angling for a comeback, but in order to do so, it will have to win over vendors who may be skeptical of working with a brand that’s fresh out of bankruptcy. On Thursday, Tru Kids Brands – the new holding company of Toys ‘R’ Us – announced that it would be opening up two stores, one in Texas and one in New Jersey, in time for the holidays. Tru Kids will be partnering on the new stores with b8ta, a startup that’s built both its own physical storefronts as well as a software platform to help retailers build experiential concepts | | |
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| DTC Era | | Quip’s Shane Pittson: Being in physical stores makes us more accessible | | On this week's episode of Making Marketing, Shareen Pathak sits down with Shane Pittson, Quip's VP of growth, to discuss how Quip learned from its DTC peers in its early days, why their move into Target is part of an accessibility-focused mission and how it's working to control the brand experience in places where they don't have total control. |
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