How YouTube and Facebook video consumption exploded during the pandemic: Datacenter Weekly

Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals. Reading this online? Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox here. Rebound “U.S. media ad revenue is poised to make a 22% jump in 2021, a far rosier picture than predicted even just a few months ago, according to GroupM’s mid-year forecast,” Ad Age’s I-Hsien Sherwood reports. “After a devastating year due to pandemic losses, the March forecast from the WPP agency projected a robust 15% comeback, but strong results from big tech companies have boosted the outlook substantially.” Essential context: U.S. agency revenue tumbled 6.8% in 2020 as fallout from the pandemic pushed the economy and agencies into a deep downturn, according to Ad Age Datacenter’s annual Agency Report. That was the second-sharpest drop since we began producing Agency Report in 1945. But the agency business is coming back amid a resurgent economy. Read Bradley Johnson’s Ad Age Agency Report 2021 executive summary here. Bridging ad targeting “InfoSum wants to improve ad targeting by making the consumer data its clients store easier to share through InfoSum Bridge,” Ad Age’s Mike Juang reports. Essential context: “The company currently sells infrastructure that can process consumer data stored on a client’s system into identity graphs,” Juang adds. “The graphs, which InfoSum calls ‘bunkers,’ are then analyzed or passed along, ensuring the consumer data used to build the graphs never leaves storage and protecting user privacy. InfoSum says Bridge now makes it easier to share this information.” Keep reading here. The social video explosion The Global Video Measurement Alliance—which includes Tubular Labs (the social video measurement platform that serves as the data supplier for the GVMA), Group Nine, Discovery, Digitas, ViacomCBS, BuzzFeed and other major players—is out with a new report titled “Discovering Audiences on Social Video.” Among the most striking revelations are the ones that have to do with the explosion of social video during the pandemic. Specifically: • Social video reach across YouTube and Facebook in the U.S. grew by 55% from February 2020 to February 2021. • During that same period, social video consumption—as measured by total watch time—across YouTube and Facebook grew dramatically across all age groups in the U.S.: 62% for 13-to-17-year-olds, 42% for 18-34, 49% for 35-54, and 52% for 55+. Learn more: You can download a copy of the report here. Just briefly • Taking on Adobe and Salesforce: “Why Zeta Global’s co-founder sees opportunity in the shift to digital,” from Ad Age. • A (massive) new trove of data for AI: “U.S. Launches Task Force to Open Government Data for AI Research,” The Wall Street Journal reports. • ICYMI: “U.S. advertising employment barely moved in May as ad staffing plateaus,” per Ad Age. • Amazon Web Services under threat: “Alleged Capitol rioter pleads guilty to plotting to blow up Amazon data center,” per Fox News. • Hacked: “EA got hit by a data breach, and hackers are selling source code,” per the Verge. See also: “Ten years of breaches in one image,” also from The Verge. • Privacy watch: “As ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data, privacy watchers see fears coming true,” per Digiday. The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter. Ad Age Datacenter is Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Catherine Wolf. This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.

How YouTube and Facebook video consumption exploded during the pandemic: Datacenter Weekly

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