In the Roaring Twenties, Ads Make a Comeback

An Anonymous Coward writes:

In the Roaring Twenties, Ads Make a Comeback:

Digital media executives scrambled last year to tell their boards about their new subscription products, but something strange happened: Their old, unfashionable advertising businesses exploded as consumers stayed home and shopped online. And now, travel companies, liquor companies and basically everyone else hoping to capitalize on a wide open summer and the marketing dream of a post-pandemic Roaring Twenties economic boom have begun pouring money into advertising on virtually every platform, but digital media most of all.

"Ad spending is red-hot right now," says Henry Blodget, a co-founder of Insider (formerly Business Insider), which was early to introduce a subscription tier in 2017. "The economy is cranking up, travel and leisure are coming back, and consumers are emerging from their pandemic cocoons."

Several privately held publishers said their first-quarter ad revenue was up strikingly over the same quarter last year, which was the last one largely unscathed by the pandemic: Insider by more than 30 percent; Bloomberg Media was up 29 percent; Vice, 25 percent; Bustle Digital Group, more than 25 percent; and Axios's quarterly ad revenue nearly doubled, executives at those companies told me.

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