I listen to a number of podcasts in a variety of subject areas: politics, news, books, tech, science, history. A few of them have mentioned that advertisers have cut back on spending. On others that are part of a podcast network, there are more ads for other network podcasts than there used to be and fewer ads for providers of goods an services. Maybe the podcasters are the canary in the coal mine.
In my experience, it’s customer service and quality that are first cut, because the customer doesn’t find out there isn’t any of either until after they have handed their money over to the “JC”.
Nope, it’s advertising. You can kill hundreds of thousands of dollars at a single swoop. Getting rid of employees is messy, and you still have to pay their unemployment and other benefits as are required by law.
That said, companies rarely kill “all” advertising. In radio we used to see the trade-down effect. Companies would kill half their TV schedule, put a half of that savings into radio, and pocket the rest. (Of course we had radio advertisers doing the same thing, so it wasn’t frictionless to us, either.) But we generally rode through recessions with pretty small effects. The TV and print guys were crying in their beer.
Having been out of all three businesses for several decades I don’t really know how it might play out today, but I would expect something of the same: whoever is weakest in the game will get smacked the hardest because they’re last on the priority list, and whoever gets the lion’s share will also get smacked, simply because that’s where the money is. I don’t claim to have any insight into whether that will be Google, Facebook, Google-placed ads on other websites, payments to influencers, co-op programs, movie tie-in allowances, traditional media (as still exists), or any of the other dozens of places clever Mad Men have discovered to shovel marketing money. I wish I did, but the world has changed since I was in it; I’m just an outsider now, looking in.
OTOH, I’m retired and don’t care, so there’s that.
The drop in stock price was directly associated with the CEO’s announcement about impacts from tariffs. Sure, Amazon is a competitor, but many are saying things like this -
“So, did Amazon just say “checkmate” to The Trade Desk? I would respond with a resounding “no.” During the period in which Amazon was reportedly siphoning away “millions” from The Trade Desk, Amazon grew its advertising sales 18% year over year, while The Trade Desk’s revenue grew 25%.”
Did you even read the whole link you posted?
Anyhoo, this isn’t about one company’s prospects. It’s about the impact tariffs will have on ALL advertisers. It’ll be bad.
