“Candidly, we have to reset the expectations for the second half,” said one executive. “You ladder up from the bottom, but the bottom keeps moving.”
Overall, the general economic climate is healthier now, said one executive, but that optimism is unlikely to result in substantial upticks in spending this year.
In fact at Cannes, most conversations were focused on targets 12 to 18 months from now, according to BDG chief revenue officer and president Jason Wagenheim.
“I’m not expecting that optimism to turn into business in the second half of 2023,” Wagenheim said.
Auto and travel are up, tech and financial still lag
Trends in category spend have remained largely consistent: luxury budgets continue to grow, while technology and financial services continue to waver.
But two categories—auto and travel—have picked up substantially for publishers in a position to capitalize on them.
At The Atlantic, auto advertising revenues have risen 350% year over year, while travel has increased 810%, according to McKown. Similarly, BDG auto-delivered 10 times more revenue in 1H 2023 than the year prior, according to Wagenheim.
These increases have been largely driven by an increase in spend from electric vehicle manufacturers and consumers’ pent-up demand for travel, according to Josh Stinchcomb, the chief revenue officer at The Wall Street Journal.
“Auto is back in a big way, with a renewed focus on electric vehicles and more broadly, the future of mobility,” Stinchcomb said.
Experiential and video demand has risen, while audio cools
While executives stressed that clients continue to prefer multichannel campaigns, two mediums—experiential and video—remain high-growth areas.
At BDG, experiential accounted for 20% of its revenue mix in the first half of the year, compared to 2% the year prior, according to Wagenheim.
The channel has proven so promising for news startup Semafor that it has doubled the size of its events team and shifted its revenue mix from 75% advertising and 25% events to a 50-50 split, said chief revenue officer Rachel Oppenheim. The publisher also hired a chief experiential officer, Jamie Drogin Lehman, Monday.
Meanwhile, demand for premium video offerings continues to skyrocket, according to Mann. In response, publishers like Condé Nast, Insider and Bloomberg Media have worked to make their on-site video offerings more visible and their targeting capabilities more granular.
“We’re seeing that brands are looking for data usage opportunities, video advertising and video integrations,” said Bloomberg Media global chief revenue officer Christine Cook.