Mastercard NFT lead Satvik Sethi resigns, mints resignation letter as NFT

Sethi’s Twitter thread announcing his departure received significant attention, garnering 227,000 views, nearly 200 retweets and numerous sympathetic comments, at the time of writing. Web3 enthusiasts particularly took a liking to the thread because of Sethi’s decision to mint his resignation letter as an NFT and sell it as a means of financial support. The token, listed on the Manifold marketplace, has sold 77 copies at 0.023 ETH a piece, or just under $40.

Sethi, a citizen of India, claims the trouble began when he moved from New York to London due to issues with his visa. His salary was reduced by 40% upon relocation, while his workload increased by 200%, he wrote. Outside of Mastercard, Sethi is the founder and CEO of Joincircle, a Web3 social networking platform.

Sethi said that facing financial instability he was forced to take on side jobs while continuing his work at Mastercard. When reached by Ad Age, Sethi explained that these jobs included consulting and advisory work for NFT projects, as well as ghostwriting and editorial work for online blogs and creators. At Mastercard, his primary focus was to lay the groundwork and develop strategy for the company’s Web3 programs, according to his resignation letter. 

The harassment Sethi said he experienced included being condescendingly rejected upon asking for support and resources, as well as degradation and pressure to make decisions. As for inefficiencies pertaining to his compensation, he claimed that he didn’t receive his salary for months at a time—an impasse that ended only when he “begged across the hierarchy for it.” Some time after being told by HR he needed to serve a three-month notice before he could leave, Sethi said he learned he would only be paid for one month. He said that when he tried to challenge this he was informed that he either had to accept the deal by the end of the day or lose his bonus.

“It’s the lackadaisical attitude from my hierarchy and HR that ruined this experience for me,” he told Ad Age, echoing a follow-up tweet he posted Thursday. “I don’t think they expected me to go public this way otherwise they probably would’ve treated me better.”

 

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Super Bowl ad budgets hold up as the ‘teaser’ spots pile up

The 2023 Super Bowl ads are once again teeming with big-name US celebrities, but as usual many of the commercials are loud and flashy rather than memorably creative. This year many are playing the nostalgia card by recreating stars’  film or TV roles.

Michelob Light features the unusual pairing of Serena Williams and Succession’s Brian Cox in a Caddyshack spoof; Sly Stallone does a Cliffhanger reboot for Michelob Light; fintech Rakuten has persuaded Alicia Silverstone to recreate her role as Cher in Clueless; and Brian Cranston and Aaron Paul reprise their Breaking Bad roles for PepsiCo snacks.

A more original standout is Anomaly’s spot for Bud Light, featuring Whiplash star Miles Teller (also in Top Gun: Maverick) and his wife Keleigh. It puts the brand centre stage while injecting some fun into the frustration of being put on permanent hold by customer services.

Not that many ads are playing out in full ahead of the game on 12th February: the release of “teaser” previews is increasingly popular. It seems daft for ads to get their own ads, but it may maximise the impact of the colossal media buy and encourage people to stick around and watch the ads during the game.

This actually happens and you will see bars full of people cheering (or booing) the ads during the breaks.

The good news is that the economic downturn doesn’t seem to have dampened the Super Bowl advertising spirt – or interfered with its budgets. And some of those teasers may herald some top creativity.

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Blockbuster Video doing a Super Bowl commercial stunt—with cockroaches

It goes without saying that the game-day commercial itself will not be a national spot. You can’t even call it regional. Let’s call it hyperlocal. It will run at one location only—inside the Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon, where store manager Sandi Harding will play it on a TV from a VHS copy. Don’t fret, though—if you really want to see it, they are going to be broadcasting the whole event live on Instagram.

As goofy as it is, the stunt’s meta weirdness is fun—roping an all-but-forgotten cult brand into the biggest media circus of the year. And if the apocalyptic theme is a little dark, that’s on brand, too—for a company that’s been left for dead (yet lives on!).

“We know that the world as we know it may be coming to an end, but we refuse to go down without a fight,” Harding said in press materials sent to Ad Age. “We want to remind everyone that there’s something special about the tangible experience of browsing the shelves and discovering something new. And honestly, if the world is ending, we want to go out with a bang.” 

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General Motors + Netflix – “Mask” (Squid game) / Will Ferrell (2023) :15 (USA) Adland®

This year, Netflix and General Motors have joined forces to make a Super Bowl commercial with comic actor Will Ferrell. The marketing agreement the two have struck will put new GM electric vehicles in popular Netflix series like “Love Is Blind,” “Queer Eye” and “Unstable.” This is a teaser for the big bowl, starring characters from “Squid games.”

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YouTube ad sales drop along with Google’s search business

Google’s ad business struggled in the fourth quarter as YouTube saw its ad revenue decline 8% year over year to $7.96 billion, parent company Alphabet reported in its financial results on Thursday.

The YouTube ad loss was the second quarter in a row that revenue declined for Google’s video site. The ad results reflect a decline in demand that many digital ad platforms have experienced in recent quarters. This week, Meta and Snap also reported slowdowns in advertising and predicted further pressure on the market in the current quarter.

Google’s search ad business also declined in the fourth quarter to $42.6 billion, down 2% year over year. Google’s shares dropped nearly 4% in after-hours trading.

The lackluster results come as Google’s core advertising business is under threat on multiple fronts—and not just because of the slowed economy. The US Department of Justice and eight states sued the search giant last week over its alleged monopolization of the ad-tech market. 

And the company’s flagship search business, which drives most of its ad revenue, may be under threat from new entrants. Google last year declared a “code red” in response to Open AI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

Related: A marketing guide to ChatGPT

On Thursday, in an earnings call with analysts, Google executives discussed advances in artificial intelligence, a theme that Meta also touted in its earnings call on Wednesday. Both companies are leaning into AI to power their ad platforms and improve marketer performance, particularly around e-commerce goals.

Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, outlined YouTube’s strategy with Shorts, the TikTok-style videos, and in connected TV. YouTube saw 50 billion views a day on Shorts in the fourth quarter, Schindler said. “We’re focused No. 1, ramping Shorts,” Schindler said. “No. 2, accelerating engagement on large screens. No. 3 investing in our subscription offering, and No. 4 our long-term effort to make YouTube more shoppable.”

Google has acknowledged the challenges it faces with an increased commitment to efficiency. In January, Alphabet slashed 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce—the largest job cuts in its history. Other major tech firms have done cuts at a similar scale. Meta has also promised a leaner, more efficient organization.

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General Motors / Netflix – “Directions” (AOTD) / Why not an EV? (2023) :15 (USA) Adland®

This year, Netflix and General Motors have joined forces to make a Super Bowl commercial with comic actor Will Ferrell. The marketing agreement the two have struck will put new GM electric vehicles in popular Netflix series like “Squid games”, “Army of the Dead” and “Love Is Blind.” In this teaser Will Ferrell meets one of the many zombies from AOTD.

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Amazon ad sales up 19% in Q4 2022

Amazon’s main e-commerce business may be slowing down, but advertising continued to grow at a pace that beats digital ad rivals such as Google and Meta. Amazon Ads grew 19% year over year to nearly $11.6 billion in the fourth quarter, Amazon announced Thursday.

Amazon’s overall fourth-quarter sales, including e-commerce and cloud computing, increased 9% year over year to $149.2 billion. Amazon projected lackluster revenue in the current quarter, worrying investors that the company’s main e-commerce business has stalled, and sales growth has slowed in the cloud computing division. Its shares fell in extended trading.

Notably, Amazon’s advertising growth was lower than it had been in the third quarter last year, when it rose 30% year over year, which could signal some weakness, Andrew Lipsman, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, said in an email. “Amazon Ads had a great quarter relative to the rest of the digital ad industry, and will continue to outperform in the coming quarters,” Lipsman said. “In the context of Amazon’s business, it decelerated following a resurgent Q3 and wasn’t as strong as it could’ve been given it had the benefit of an October Prime Day event in Q4 that it didn’t have last year. And given how much Amazon’s retail business depends on the ads business for profits, it simply didn’t help out as much as it could have.”

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