TWITTER TURNAROUND:  It looks like there might be some hope for the tier of major digital publishers just below the Duopoly after all.  Following up on Tuesday’s positive earnings call from Snap, Twitter had some good news of its own to share during their Q4 call.  The headline is that they finally turned a quarterly profit for the first time . . . ever.  According to the attached WSJ link, revenue was up 2% YoY and DAUs grew by 12%.  While these stats are decent the key to Twitter’s $91M net profit in Q4 was massive cost slashing – compared to Q4’16 they cut expenses by 28%.  Wall Street rewarded Twitter with a 17% jump in stock price which actually put Twitter’s market valuation of $25B back over Snap’s $24B.  Besides just the bottom line improvement Twitter seems to have survived the pivot from being a dated display ad platform to a video-first publisher, which helped them command much higher CPMs.  While Twitter appears to be on a more stable financial footing, the devil’s advocate might point out that cutting expenses like this is a one-time way to goose earnings and that they won’t be able to keep cutting their way to profitability in the future.  Fair point to be sure, but it just feels better to be in the black – finally.

PUBLICIS GEARING UP FOR MEDIAPALOOZA TWO?  Speaking of rebounds one of the more beleaguered Holding Companies of the past few years, Publicis, also had a turnaround year in 2017.  According to the attached AdExchanger link, Publicis grew it’s revenue by just under 1% for the full year with $12B in billings. I know that doesn’t sound like much growth, but when you look at the quarterly performance you can see a clear upswing mid-year – they started Q1 at -1.2% and then sequentially improved each quarter up to +2.2% in Q4.  Given how rough the last few years have been on the four HoldCos, Publicis and its investors should be happy with this rebound.  There was one other note about this article that really caught my eye.  Steve King, the head of Publicis.Sapient in the UK, is predicting a “Mediapalooza Two event this year with an unprecedented number of clients putting their accounts up for review.”  I can feel the collective cringe from those of you with fresh memories of disruption the first Mediapalooza caused in 2015-2016.  Fingers crossed he’s wrong and cheers to Publicis in the meantime.

THE PODCAST BOOM DISSECTED:  Earlier this week a work colleague sent me an interesting Visual Capitalist research piece on the state of podcasting.  It’s a really thorough dissection of who’s listening to podcasting, when they’re listening, and what they’re listening to.  Given that 24% of Americans now listen to podcasts, which has doubled since 2013, it’s becoming an important audio platform to be versed in.  As it turns out Millennials are the most voracious consumers of podcasts, comedy is the most widely consumed podcast content, and we listen in the car more than anywhere else.  One of the keys to podcasting’s growth has been the transition from downloaded podcasts (think MP3s you save to a device and listen to later), to streamed podcasts (just like streamed music).  Not only is streaming easier for listeners who can just pull up a podcast on demand whenever they have an internet connection, it’s also easier to monetize since ads can be inserted in real time.  All of this adds up to a high-growth sector of the audio landscape which (and this is just my guess), could eventually replace AM radio as the way we consume spoken word content.  Hmmm . . . something for you to chew on over the weekend . . .

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!