Table of contents for September 27, 2021 in Adweek

Brittany Bosco’s many talents make it hard to categorize the multidisciplinary artist. In the past five years, she started her own creative shop and record label, released two albums and led branding work for Facebook, Instagram, HBO and Snap. At its core, her non-agency Slug Global is more of an art collective: It’s a passion-driven, purpose-focused group of artists who only take on projects that are collaborative in nature and in line with Slug’s vision of “creating spaces and opportunity for marginalized voices.” Upon receiving her BFA in fashion design from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008, Bosco already knew she wouldn’t spend her career designing apparel. While she spent the next several years building her music career, she said her time in school opened her up to the…

Connected TV viewership has arguably been the media industry’s biggest success since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and marketers are expected to spend $17 billion to serve ads to those audiences next year. As with most forms of new media, however, the nascent nature of the platform has also attracted the attention of fraudsters seeking to defraud marketers of their paid-for media dollars, which some fear could stall the forecasted increase in spend. To counter this, the IAB Tech Lab is proposing a series of tech standards to win marketer confidence and further entice ad dollars away from traditional TV screens, including dusting off ads.cert, a verification standard that debuted as part of OpenRTB 3.0 but failed to gain scaled pickup. IAB Tech Lab hopes the surge in popularity…

Binge-watching took on a whole new meaning during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Whether it was Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso or Netflix’s Bridgerton, consumers’ hunger for entertainment in a locked-down world injected rocket fuel into an already exploding streaming video marketplace. Time spent watching streaming services has soared, and in July, streaming video accounted for 28% of viewers’ total television time, according to Nielsen. As of early 2021, nearly half of U.S. broadband households subscribe to at least four streaming services, according to research firm Parks Associates. Which is why almost every streaming service has seen forecast-busting growth, including Disney+, which has “exceeded our wildest expectations,” as Disney CEO Bob Chapek said in late 2020, and Discovery+, which was “exceeding all [its] early benchmarks” in April, according to…

To further mitigate against fraud, Omnicom Media Group has developed a certification program for buyers across all its agencies to help clients better protect their ad dollars: Educate your organization on fraud, common attack vectors and areas of risk across all areas of the supply chain. Develop strong 1:1 relationships with content makers, device manufacturers and service providers. Access CTV inventory through vetted private methods, not on the open exchange. Demand more transparency and granularity from your platforms and partners. Partner with fraud verification companies to develop new detection methods for fighting fraud. SOURCE: OMNICOM MEDIA GROUP RONAN SHIELDS IS ADWEEK’S PROGRAMMATIC EDITOR, FOCUSING ON ADTECH. @RONAN_SHIELDS…

On March 18, just two days after a shooter killed eight people at three Atlanta spas, Daniel Dae Kim addressed Congress virtually about the rapid rise of anti-Asian and anti-Asian American violence in the U.S. While some would find a task such as that daunting, it was Kim’s second time doing so in a span of six months. “I’m both honored and dismayed to be back in front of you,” Kim greeted the congressional representatives before talking about House Resolution 908, a bill formally condemning all forms of anti-Asian sentiment. The House ultimately passed the bill, but not without some hardship: Despite only requiring, as Kim notes, “a simple condemnation of acts of hate against people of Asian descent,” the resolution still faced opposition from 164 members of Congress—an unconscionable…

For those who weren’t around for it, the first few minutes of 2000 were really scary. Throughout the late ’90s, doomsday prophets had been warning that computer programs the world over would go haywire at the stroke of midnight, as most time coding assumed that “19” preceded the year. Times Square would go dark. Planes would crash. Nuclear missiles would launch. The millennium bug, as it was known, meant trouble. But at the headquarters for Aflac in Columbus, Ga., CEO Dan Amos had another reason to be nervous. He’d just spent $1 million of the company’s money on a new ad campaign set to debut on CNN shortly after midnight. New York-based Kaplan Thaler Group had proposed an unusual idea. Amos loved it, but selling it had been another matter.…

Residents of Charlotte, N.C., were riled by an odd out-of-home message urging them, “Don’t Get Vaccinated.” The now-viral ad was for a fake business—Wilmore Funeral Home—created by agency BooneOakley to serve a sobering reminder about Covid-19. The ad directed people to a website ostensibly for the business that presented visitors with two options: “Get vaccinated,” with a hyperlink to the vaccination page for a walk-in clinic nearby, or “We’ll see you soon.” As of Sept. 22, the funeral site has generated nearly 150,000 pageviews and the clinic’s page has seen a 500% increase in traffic.…

“Over the past several decades, all of us have gotten very accustomed to single-use and disposable packaging,” said Denise Osterhues, Kroger’s senior director of sustainability and social impact. That’s not good. Beginning next month, the Kroger Company plans to start selling about 20 Loop products, such as dry food and hand soap, in 25 Fred Meyer stores in the Portland, Ore., area. Once shoppers are done with the goods, they can return the empty containers in a Loop tote that contains a QR code to reimburse their deposit fee. Loop ambassadors will be on-site during peak times to explain how it all works. “We are hopeful that our socially conscious and environmentally minded customers in the Portland market will respond favorably,” Osterhues added. PAUL HIEBERT IS A CPG REPORTER AT…

How did you get to where you are today? At MTV, I was tasked with being an unofficial Twitter ambassador. I used Twitter to publish and promote my RSS feed. (Remember those days?) I didn’t realize until I joined 360i that I had become a community manager. And I loved it. I was hooked on social media, content strategy and creation. What new or up-and-coming innovation will change the future of marketing? Audio. Brands will have to think about how they sound and what sounds exemplify who they are. From podcasts to live audio to choosing the right track on TikTok, there’s an additional element now. And if that song you can’t get out of your head is any indication, when brands choose the right sounds or audio, it can be…

When 60 Minutes founder Harry Reasoner heard about the launch of Ms. magazine in the summer of 1972, his reaction was immediate. “I give it six months before they run out of things to say,” cracked the normally affable CBS anchor. Lots of American men felt like Reasoner did. Prior to activist Gloria Steinem launching a periodical dedicated to “feminist news and information,” media content aimed at women rarely went beyond stories about housekeeping, cooking for your husband and finding the right dress. Ms. broke new ground by running articles about contentious topics that are still pertinent: sexual harassment in the workplace, date rape on campus and the criminalization of abortion. Unsurprisingly, Ms. never did run out of things to say: Editor-in-chief Steinem and publisher Patricia Carbine celebrated the magazine’s…