Fifty-Four Percent of Consumers Open Product-Oriented Email

• SparkPost, the world’s largest email delivery and analytics engine that delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s email, published the results of a consumer survey co-developed with leading global survey software company SurveyMonkey.

• The survey captures how retail consumers feel about marketing communications from their favorite retail brands – what marketing activity promotes consumer engagement and digital purchases, and what brands are doing that drive consumer’s away.

• The survey analyzed data from 1,124 consumer research responses and measured it against SparkPost’s 1.5 million consumer recipient email activity data and performance panel.

Why YouTube Is Renaming Its FameBit Influencer Marketplace to ‘BrandConnect’

• With influencer marketing on the rise, particularly on video platforms, YouTube has today announced that it’s updating its FameBit influencer marketplace, and renaming it ‘BrandConnect’.

• As explained by YouTube: “Through YouTube BrandConnect, we’re making it easier for creators and brands to create branded content that is both authentic and effective. Our focus will continue to be supporting and driving revenue to creators, providing measurable campaigns for brands, and reaching viewers with authentic and relevant content. We’ve built unique, industry-first features within our branded content platform to support each of these goals.”

• FameBit has thus far facilitated connection between brands and selected YouTube influencers, with a simple process of posting campaigns, then allowing YouTube identities to pitch for them.

Are Your Company’s Digital Ads Funding Racism and Hate? This New Firm Will Check for You

• Back in November 2016, Nandini Jammi co-founded the advertising watchdog Sleeping Giants with Matt Rivitz to keep brands accountable and aware of what online content their advertising was funding.

• After three years of voluntarily helping brands identify the sites that their ads are—in some cases—unintentionally funding, Jammi and her business partner Claire Atkin have launched a new consultancy called Check My Ads to formalize their work.

• Atkin and Jammi first met at a Vancouver conference last year, and their new firm aims to help marketers first identify whether their ad budgets are inadvertently funding hate speech, conspiracy, and disinformation.