Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals.

Peloton, Chewy marketing spend revealed

Want some quick, smart analysis on the latest financial data and news from key marketers? Turn to “Ad spending, marketing and financial stats—analyzing the latest data,” the newest Ad Age blog. Two of the most recent entries from Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson:

• “What’s up with Peloton? Ad spending. What’s down? Revenue”

• “What’s up (actually down) with Chewy’s marketing spending?”

Keep reading here.

Roku’s new data play

“As companies such as Google and Apple look to tighten access to cookies and consumer data, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may find their options for targeted advertising scarce,” writes Ad Age’s Parker Herren. “To bridge the gap for those businesses hoping to snag eyeballs in the ever-growing and competitive world of streaming, Roku announced [on Thursday] a new program to make the process more accessible.”

The details: Roku will now offer “streaming audience data and ad-buying tools directly to SMB clients, and announced Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media as its first partner for the program,” Herren reports. “The platform will run through its ad-buying platform OneView, which Roku launched in early 2020.”

Essential context: “Roku is the latest streaming platform to woo SMBs, which have become eager to test connected TV. For several years, Hulu has looked to appeal to these marketers by offering a self-serve advertising platform that makes ad space available to advertisers who otherwise might have been priced out of the market.”

Keep reading here.

What Allbirds customers are watching online

Social video measurement and analytics platform Tubular just completed a study of the video-consumption habits of consumers of various direct-to-consumer brands, and has shared the data with Datacenter Weekly first. Here’s the intel they have on Allbirds, the trendy sustainable footwear and apparel company:

• Allbirds customers are more likely than average consumers to watch sports content related to college basketball, rowing and horse racing.

• Allbirds customers are more likely than average consumers to watch health and wellness content related to anti-aging.

• Allbird customers are more likely than average consumers to watch travel content related to heritage sites, South America and spas.

With that information, you can kind of picture an Allbirds customer, can’t you?

The measurement mess in depth

If you haven’t yet checked out Ad Age’s new blog titled “Media measurement uncertainty—tracking TV, social and digital,” well, here are two of the most recent posts:

• “IAB releases in-game ad measurement standards,” from Ad Age’s Jack Neff.

• “P&G backs The Trade Desk’s Unified ID cookie replacement,” also from Neff.

Keep reading here.

Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell

• “U.S. weekly jobless claims fall to three-month low,” per Reuters.

• “Fed Chair Powell vows to raise rates to fight inflation ‘until the job is done,’” CNBC reports.

• “Fewer Americans listing inflation as top issue in elections: survey,” per The Hill.

Don’t miss: “Layoffs and budget cuts—tracking economic moves and news,” Ad Age’s continually updated blog covering how the marketing industry is bracing for a recession.

U.S. ad business employment dips

Ad Age’s Bradley Johnson reports that ad agency employment just dipped a bit, per the latest government data.

Essential context: “Employment in advertising, public relations and related services fell by 400 jobs in August, indicating the market slowing following strong gains earlier in the summer,” Johnson notes. “For the overall economy, U.S. employers added 315,000 jobs in August, taking employment to an all-time high, according to the monthly employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

Keep reading for Johnson’s drill-downs by BLS classifications.

Just briefly

• “TikTok denies hacker group’s claim of massive data breach,” per the New York Post.

• “Health care marketing—how agencies are leaning into data and influencers,” from Ad Age.

• “Beijing’s Plan to Control the World’s Data: Out-Google Google,” from Newsweek.

​​• “Instagram fined $400 million for failing to protect children’s data,” per Reuters (via CNN Business).

• “Android 13 is making it easier to keep work and personal data separate,” The Verge reports.

Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022

In his introduction to the newly released Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022 report, Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson reports that advertisers scored “the second-biggest spending gain on record” in 2021, marking “an extraordinary turnaround from the pandemic plunge in 2020. Spending has continued to grow in 2022, though budgets could come under pressure as marketers grapple with inflation, rising interest rates and slumping consumer confidence amid escalating expectations of a recession.”

There’s a lot to LNA 2022—so the Datacenter team has come up with multiple entry points for you to start your own deep dive. To wit:

• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—10 most-advertised brands in the U.S., ranked”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Will ad spending rise in the (coming) recession? It’s happened before”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—25 biggest U.S. advertisers, ranked”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—U.S. market leaders and category rankings”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Big spending gains and cuts”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—What comes next after 2021's ad spending surge”
• “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Ad spending by medium, category and advertiser”

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 Joy R. Lee.

This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco.