Advertising news today: Amazon’s ads, Oath subscriptions

Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos
Michael Seto
Photography

According to new data from advertising agency Merkle, Amazon has
ramped up the number of Google search ads it buys to drive
traffic to its website during the holidays this year.

While the jump in ad spend isn’t surprising during the
advertising-heavy fourth quarter of the year, the timing of
Amazon’s ad spend is intriguing.

Merkle tracked Amazon’s ad spend during Cyber Weekend and found
that the e-commerce giant upped its Google search ads
“significantly” during the week of Thanksgiving. The agency said
that while Amazon usually aggressively floods Google with search
ads during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon’s highest ad
spend doesn’t typically kick in until December.

Click here to read more about Merkle’s
findings.

In other news:

Facebook is betting that shows with cult followings like
‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ can juice up Facebook Watch and bring
in millennial viewers. Facebook has inked a deal
with 20th Century Fox to distribute all seasons of “Buffy the
Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Firefly” on Facebook Watch.

Verizon’s Oath unit is exploring new business models
outside of advertising, including subscriptions to HuffPost and
Yahoo Sports, reports The Wall Street Journal. Oath
has reportedly missed revenue targets for digital ads and hopes
the new models will give users ways to make purchases through its
sites.

Nexstar Media Group is nearing a deal to buy Tribune
Media for $4.1 billion. The deal would make the
combined company the biggest regional US TV station operator.

Facebook is quietly developing ‘soft robotics’ —
flexible robots that move and act like living
organisms. Soft robotics is an experimental field of
robotics that draws inspiration from biology, from lizard tongues
to octopuses.

New reports from two major ad-buying firms tell different
stories about where the advertising industry will shake out this
year, according to AdExchanger. Magna Global reports
that global advertising is on track to increase 7.2% in 2018 to
$552 billion. GroupM, meanwhile, has lowered its growth forecast
for this year from 4.5% to 4.3%, reaching $543 billion.

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