Daily Clips: The Death of Cookies

Jimmy Finkelstein Plans Next Big Media Venture

Jimmy Finkelstein, who recently sold The Hill, a D.C based political newspaper, for $130 million in August this past summer is now looking to build a foundation for a new media company.

The company will be based in Florida, where Finkelstein currently resides, and will include digital, streaming, as well as social media components. The topics at hand will stretch from politics, entertainment, to sports.

As a long time media investor and entrepreneur, the big picture for Finkelstein is to have offices in major cities, and possibly acquire other media companies.

Forbes Buyout

As an alternative to Forbes Media’s potential SPAC merger, investment firm GSV is working on a bid to buy the media company for $620 million. Forbes previously announced plans to go public with a merger in Q4 of this year or Q1 of 2022.

Chief Communications Officer of Forbes Media, Bill Hankes, had stated, “We remain on schedule to close the transaction in the first quarter”.

Hankes declined to comment when asked whether Forbes was in communication with GSV about the potential deal, however prior to the decision to merge with a SPAC, Forbers was pursuing a private sale.

Publishers are Ready for the Death of Cookies

The impending death of third party cookies could bring savvy publishers a wide range of opportunities going forward. According to a survey involving more than 100 digital advertising professionals at publishers, the death of cookies could provide huge value to publishers. According to the survey:

70% said the death of cookies would be beneficial to their business
There’s huge value in publishers’ trusted relationship with their audience. Enhancing the value of the first-party topped the list of publisher priorities.
Publishers’ top obstacles to being more data-driven were incomplete customer data (39%), inaccurate customer data (33%) and inaccessible customer data (25%).

CPG Sector Spends over $30 Million

In the last year, digital ad spending in the United States increased by $19.79 billion. Other forms of ad spending such as TV, radio, and print ad spending had decreased by 18.1%. In this upcoming year its anticipated that due to companies previously constrained budgets and accelerated pace of digital transformation that the digital ad spending total will be around $38.83 million.

Mobile advertising is the most popular vertical for digital ad spending in the United States, as well as every else. It is clear that mobile’s ever-accelerating domination of the digital ad market will begin to level off since 2016 and will stagnate at roughly 68% of the market.

Nonprofit Newsrooms

While many thought nonprofit newsrooms were the future of news to protect against venture capitalist attack, the shine is starting to wear off.

Nonprofit news created many opportunities to be more empathetic towards their communities and even be more community centered, but many nonprofit newsrooms still perpetuate the same injustices as in for-profit news.

It’s important for nonprofit newsrooms to show what it means to go beyond the tax status. They need to stand by the values they express, be transparent and be accountable, as well as go beyond arguing that they are creating impact.

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