Hello! Impressions were once meant to last. Creative signals. Now they’ve been assembled in bulk to be sold to advertiser. Actual attention, a fleeting commodity. It’s a volume game, much like Costco -- where my ashes will be spread. Pallets stacked sky high. To heaven.
Impressions: essentially meaningless, yet the industry assigns them so much value. They’ve built mountains out of mole hills; they’ve minted the new breed of entertainer, now platform. We all must now play to, cater to, the almighty algo. Supreme ruler.
Bow down, to just another empty vessel. Skip ad. Zero brand recall. We’re trending honey.
What lies ahead of engagement. What is actually effective. Events, experiences as markets, an ideology. References & referrals are where it’s at. If you read this you might also like… me more. The -ography. Always rip out the affiliate links from the URL. Sunset lamp scams. The trackers and crawlers. Cookies.
To be known is to be loved. The ruse as a muse, femme fatale.. and her fatal flaw.
CPMs aren’t conversion. Fish with a spear, not a net. Play to the audience, or piggyback off existing ones (Ball did it best with Hirschhorn). The forums from a decade ago are now industrialized meme accounts. We live in a world of bots. Social graphs, social science. Spiderwebs. Share inspiration, not information (or both). Curators as tastemakers, not critics.
Incentives everywhere. Two-word tags, sell.
Let’s use me as a free sample, Armie. Would I rather be read by 100 junior creative execs in Hollywood, or 10,000 mid-level product managers working at big tech companies. Or how about one widely beloved filmmaker, or 1,000 finance bros. Easy answers. Size isn’t everything lol
Quality > Quantity. Showing vs Growing. Blow up.
A better example, according to the NYT, Puck has about 20k paid subs, a business expense for most, and is looking at $75m val. I pay for it and dig it. Belloni is best. How much is a brand willing to pay to get in front of a few all-powerful, rather than blanket the masses. That’s influence. Gospel, meet choir. Preach. Popular prestige.
There’s a reason all the digital media pubs from yesteryear are dying. Because they lack quality and subsist off fake metrics. I look around the ‘digital’ media landscape, and see a wasteland. Same for NFTs, which now go by ‘digital’ collectibles. We can drop the ‘digital’. We live in the 2020s. Nothing isn’t digital anymore, and the online x offline convergence will only continue to ramp up. Full steam ahead. And if you’ve ever earnestly said phygital, just unsubscribe.
Speaking of digital collectibles, here’s a memo I prepared for The Writer & Worlder Fellowship that I alluded to a month ago with the proceeds from The Eye, a fantasy book collectible. We’ve got $150k to dole out. Talking to potential A-list partners now. As always, feel free to reach out if you’d like to learn more. Better sooner than later, and it goes without saying, if you’re a rep you probably should… what would your clients think if you didn’t share this with them?
This whole rant was a sponsored post generated by AI. It wasn’t.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Clockwork L’orange. See ya next week. 4 left.
Tech
Paragraph, substack for web3, raised $1.7m Para
Yoom, photoreal 3D scans of people, raised $15m (lots of celeb names thx to Wachter) CCT
Shutterstock to sell AI generated imagery with OpenAI Verge
Odyssey Interactive, game studio, raised $19m VB
Pixaera, educational gaming, raised $4.5m TEU
Descript, audio/video editing, raised $550m OpenAI Info
Max, music audience exchange, raised a B VCN
Google acq AI avatar startup Alter for $100m TC
Journey, b2b branding with “stories” raised pre-seed Med
Crop Circle Games, game studio, raised $25m Transcend
Mason, commerce engine in India, raised $7.5m TC
ForeVR, vr games, raised $10m TC
Bidstack, in-game ads, raised $11m Fins
OpenWeb, publisher ad network, raised $170m VCN
Generating 3D worlds with CommonSim CSM
Resonai, digital twins of buildings, raised $20m SA
Makea Games, game studio, raised $1.3m Mak
Gree, Japanese gaming conglom, partners with Avax Med
Lying on LinkedIn (have always wanted to do a sybil here) Fastco
Twitter rules prohibit hateful conduct YRtwtr
Typefully, better faster tweets, raised from Ev Type
Media
Mr Beast seeks 10fig val Axios
360 and Brillstein on the block Bberg
NFL Films building out entertainment division (they support Gleason in ‘16) BI
WBD restructuring costs, about $2b in content WSJ
Apple gets in way of Spotify audiobooks NYT
New Statement, digital politics co, raised $40m Semafor
Comcast takes $8.6b writedown on Sky WSJ considers sale of Sky Germany WSJ
Jellysmack earmarks $500m to find Asia’s popular creators Bberg
Endeavor sells Miss Universe to Thai’s JKN for $20m THR
Disney looks to work with indie devs for games licensing GIB
CNN Films to cut back on orig films and outside partners THR
Sony Pics vfx co Pixomondo from Mayfair Var
Streamers on trying to get into in-flight ent (Terry Steiner?) THR
WPP trying to be more of a techco Adweek
Meta’s metaverse play Horizon not going as well as planned (lol) WSJ
The rebirth of trad TV with collectibles and more (Watch this space) THR
ASM (AI NFTs) partner with FIFA FWCL
Every has 60k subs after 3 years, Lex has 40k on waitlist DStwtr
Pepsi doing a Music Lab Cision
Zuck commits to more metaverse “investments” Yahoo
Entertainment
Gotham Award noms IW
James Gray to direct JFK biopic Dead
Anonymous starts film finance/sales division Var
Lewis Hamilton starts prod co Dawn Apollo (this was like a year ago) Dead
Perfect Storm partners on Galaxy Eggs NFT universe Dead
Sweeney to star/produce Immaculate with Michael Mohan (go Chris!) Var
Guy Ritchie, Bruckheimer, Cavill, Eiza pic in the works Dead
MGM’s Orion’s adapting Nickel Boys with RaMell Ross IW
Onyx orders Deli Boys pilot Var
Pugh to star in Skarsgard’s debut the Pack IW
IFC NA rights to God’s Time Var
Night of the Living Dead in the works with Village Roadshow IW
Gunn/Safran to lead DC division THR
Justin Chon sets Night Riders at Prime Video Dead
Bateman, Law to develop limited series Black Rabbit for Nflx Var
FX orders The Bends bases on Killing Ground novel Dead
Monsters of CA (tom delonge) picked up by Screen Media Dead
Amazon orders Sausage Party series THR
Emilia Clark to play Oscar Wilde’s “wife” in An Ideal Wife Var
Sundance says its tough for docs out there Var
Collaborative
James Cameron profile NewYorker
Nick Thompson on how Moneyball has changed culture Atlantic
Haruki Murakami on where his characters come from (himself) Atlantic
Therapists say TTRPG good Wired
AI generated imagery backlash in Japan anime circles (and everywhere else) ROW
Crypto cover to cover, very good Bberg
Gaiman and GRRM dislike changes to books Var
Bret Easton ellis on genre and subversive films Var
Rihanna Lift Me Up Spot
A16z rushing into crypto (they’ll be ok) WSJ
Matt Hartman on prompt design Med
Evan Armstrong on VC being ready for disruption (can’t eat markups) Napkin
Busload of books, read more Mrep
Metaverse estate planning Puck
Gen AI and clash with art worlds Info
Celebrity deepfakes WSJ
Self-improving LLMs white paper PDF
Imagery rehearsal therapy and nightmares Cell
Edelman’s trust in media report Edel
Water and Music on being a DAO and learning WAM
AI generated selfies could become a thing Verge
AI creative tools WAM
A very good list of AI creative tools (!) Pharm
Tony Bailey on brands and NFT drops TBli
Early adaptors guide to generative AI Info
Aus football team speaks on Qatar Sydney
Altimer’s activist letter to Meta WSJ Med
Wellness non-negotiables (surfing for me) NYT
Lefsetz on too many songs and no stars on Spotify Lef
Audio clipping and short form going through a shift Prot
Terry Nguyen on worldbuilding as brandbulding (watch this space) Dirt
Listen: James Currier on generative AI SVC
Read: Elon’s basilisk Return
Watch: Snyder the himbo auteur YT