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CMO Today: Jessica Alba's Honest Co. In Sale Talks With Unilever
| Wall Street Journal | - |
MAKE
AN HONEST BUCK: Consumer goods giant Unilever is in talks to acquire
Honest Co., the retailer co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, in a deal
valued at more than $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports.
CMO Today: Jessica Alba's Honest Co. In Sale Talks With Unilever
CMO Today: Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. In Sale Talks With Unilever
Here's your morning roundup of the biggest marketing, advertising and media industry news and happenings.
Jessica Alba, co-founder of Honest Co.
Photo:
Getty Images
MEDIA CUTS: Earlier this year, the Guardian said it would cut its budget by 20% over the next three years as it contended with the decline in print advertising revenue. At the time, the newspaper’s cuts were geared primarily within its main U.K. unit, but as Politico reports, the Guardian will reduce its U.S. operation by 30%. The company will offer buyouts and then move to layoffs in an effort to reduce about 50 jobs. “It is inevitable that such seismic shifts in the business model are adversely impacting our revenues,” executives told U.S. staff in an email. Elsewhere in the media business, Disney cut 5% of its consumer products and digital media staff, amounting to 250 jobs, while NBCUniversal said it would slash about 200 jobs at recent acquiree DreamWorks Animation. And in another surprise move, Mode Media, formerly known as Glam Media, announced it was shutting down operations. The company was once valued at $1 billion and had raised at least $230 million from investors.
APPLE SUBS: iPhone users might have spent more time experimenting with iOS 10’s animated emoji and GIF messaging capabilities, but there’s another tweak in the new operating system: publishers can sell subscriptions in Apple News, CMO Today reports. Fourteen publishers, including The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the Economist, have signed on at the start. Under the deal, Apple will take 30% of the revenue from new subscribers and 15% from renewals, and the tech company will collect data on paying subscribers. It’s unclear what kind of data Apple will pass onto publishers, a dynamic that has been a source of disagreement between the two sides in the past. The Financial Times, which was a launch partner for Apple News when it rolled out last year, decided to opt out of Apple’s new program. And as CMO Today reported earlier this week, the iOS 10 update also tweaked a feature on the iPhone’s “Spotlight” screen, which effectively dinged publishers’ mobile web traffic.
AD COALITION: The media world may differ in opinion on whether ad blockers are a force for good or evil, but pretty much everyone is in agreement on the root cause: advertising on the internet has become really annoying and intrusive. That’s why, as Business Insider reports, Google has helped band together trade associations, advertisers, publishers and agencies in a group called “The Coalition for Better Ads.” That’s right: the people responsible for online advertising as we know it are going to get us out of this mess by creating a measurement system that will “score” ads on criteria like page load time and tracking pixels. Ads that meet certain standards will be allowed to make it through participating companies’ filters, making it sound a lot like Adblock Plus’ “Acceptable Ads” program – except that this group obviously won’t simultaneously be marketing ad blockers. As BI notes, the coalition does not include any consumer groups. Also, in a quirky bit of timing, the announcement comes shortly after Google had to distance itself from Adblock Plus, which created a new ad exchange in which it said Google would play a part. (Google said it was unaware of the arrangement and quickly severed ties with the project.)
Elsewhere
Jen Wong has been named chief operating officer of Time Inc., a newly created position. Ms. Wong is new CEO Rich Battista’s first appointment since taking over from Joe Ripp this week. [WSJ]Twitter streamed its first of 10 Thursday night NFL games, and many users praised the service for offering a new, easy way to watch football. The stream was also glitch free. [CNN]
CBS CEO Les Moonves said he believes his network will eventually be able to strike a deal to stream NFL games on its CBS All Access service. [Ad Age]
Digital measurement specialist ComScore said it will restate its financial results for the past three years due to improper accounting. [WSJ]
A look at how Facebook has grown its ad network, which has become a $1 billion business with some 3 million advertisers. [Digiday]
Univision’s digital chief Isaac Lee emailed Gawker Media staffers to formalize the company’s indemnity policy. Employees had raised concerns after new owner Univision decided to take down some Gawker Media posts because of legal liabilities. [Politico]
Donald Trump said that it’s a “false rumor” that he has an ambition to launch a media company should he not win the presidency. [Washington Post]
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