Eko

Publishers Boost Commerce Conversions as Traffic Falls

Digiday reports that many publishers are seeing higher commerce conversion rates and improved click-through rates (CTR) even as overall audience traffic declines. The Media Briefing — a Digiday+ weekly newsletter — highlights that shrinking audiences can concentrate higher-intent visitors, benefiting publishers’ commerce and shoppable-ad businesses. The briefing also notes industry developments including Condé Nast restructuring and reports that Vox Media is exploring a sale. The piece frames these shifts as part of broader publisher monetization strategies emphasizing commerce, subscriptions and higher-yield ad formats.

Eko Opens AI-Powered Capture Factory, Hires Ben Kaufman

Eko has opened an AI-powered capture factory and hired Ben Kaufman, a serial entrepreneur and musician.

Streaming Growth Surges as Linear TV Revenue Declines

Paramount Global reported a mixed quarter: its linear TV revenue declined 4%, with ad revenue also down 4% and affiliate and subscription revenue down 7%. In contrast, Paramount's direct-to-consumer division (including Paramount+ and Pluto TV) posted positive momentum, with ad revenue rising 9% and subscription revenue up 7%. Notably, Paramount+ subscriber growth contributed to a 16% revenue rise for the division, adding 5.6 million subscribers and bringing total to almost 78 billion. Separately, YouTube reached a milestone of more than one billion monthly podcast listeners, with the US market showing YouTube as the most-used service for viewing podcasts and hundreds of millions of hours watched on living-room devices last year. In privacy news, digital rights group Eko filed complaints with European data protection authorities (Germany, Spain, Norway) over Meta’s targeted ads, asserting opt-out requests were ignored; about 5,000 members asked Meta to stop processing their data.