The Rundown: Brand licensing shows promise for few publishers

That kind of growth would vault BuzzFeed onto a much more important list — License Global’s 150 biggest brand licensors — and put the venture-backed publisher in the company of several legacy publishing companies and broadcasters, behind leaders like Meredith ($23.2 billion in retail sales in 2017), Playboy ($1.5 billion) and Hearst ($500 million), but well ahead of Condé Nast ($150 million).

It’s hard to predict how important brand licensing can become to BuzzFeed. But for a company trying to get to sustainability, it will take incremental growth wherever it can find it. — Max Willens

Snap’s AR Landmarkers got marketers’ attention
Snapchat’s newest augmented reality feature may not seem like an obvious marketing vehicle, but agency execs already potential to use Snapchat’s Landmarkers to put their businesses on the map.

Unveiled last week, Snapchat’s Landmarkers converts physical landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and the U.S. Capitol building, into augmented reality objects that can be animated when people view them through Snapchat’s in-app camera.

As an example, a person can use the feature to record a video of a gilded Buckingham Palace with a gold lion and unicorn atop the Queen’s residence. But another possibility could be a retailer designing a Snapchat Lens that converts the landmark to resemble one of their nearby brick-and-mortar stores, including signage that points people in the direction of that location.

“In the short term, I don’t know if so many brands are going to be jumping over Landmarkers, Rolex Repliche Orologi but in the long term having 3D maps of public spaces” creates opportunities for brands that are doing live events or operate retail stores in the vicinity of a Landmarker, said Noah King, svp and group director at Havas Media’s Socialyse.

Hopefully, marketers will be more creative than a brazen brand-jacking of a national monument. And they just might be given the ability of Snapchat’s Lenses to pique agencies’ interest with their engagement numbers.

During Snap’s Partner Summit in Los Angeles on April 4, a Universal Pictures exec said that people had spent up to 20 minutes playing with a Lens that the studio had designed for one of its films, which got the attention of Meghan Myszkowski, vp and head of social activation for North America at Essence, who was in the audience for that session. “Having people spend 20 minutes with a product is worth the cost of the investment,” she said. — Tim Peterson моментальный займ онлайн