In December of 2023, Digital Trends published an article outlining the 10 U.S. streaming services with the largest volume of subscribers.

The usual suspects are there. But what’s missing is the estimated 52.8 million North American viewers watching anime on Crunchyroll. That number, which is derived from Crunchyroll’s publicly-stated global viewership numbers (120 million) and the percentage of its audience that’s in North America (44%), would put it ahead of streaming heavyweights like Hulu, Peacock, and AppleTV+. 

It’s worth noting that Crunchyroll isn’t the only anime game in town. But it is the largest player, and it serves as a useful barometer for the enormous and continually rising popularity of anime in 2024. Survey after survey backs it up: 42% of Gen Z respondents to a survey in January say they watch anime at least weekly. That’s significantly more than the 25% who say they watch the NFL.

And not only is Crunchyroll completely missing from this list of major streaming publishers, but somehow anime in general is remaining under the radar of a lot of advertisers. McDonalds’ anime-inspired “WcDonalds” campaign in February made waves for just how unique it was in targeting anime audiences. 

All of this leaves us with the question of: How on earth could an audience this big be hiding in plain sight?

The Demographic Gap

This is probably a twofold problem:

• The people calling the shots in the ad industry – the managers and executives – grew up in a storytelling culture where anime was largely absent.

   

• As a result, the perception of value of stories from this kind of storytelling tradition is likely quite different between generations.

Here’s what this means: An analysis of anime viewership shows decreasing viewership with increased age. GenX and beyond (who are on average between the ages of 44-60 at the time of this writing) show massive drops in viewership. Adult anime fans in the U.S. in 2022, according to Statista, were about 25% Gen-Z, 42% millennial – and then 21% Gen-X and 12% boomers.

Meaning that if you’re early Gen-X and beyond – anime just might not be on your radar. Leaders in advertising firms are, statistically, quite likely to be unaware of the spending power and raw numbers of those who spend their free time watching giant robots duke it out. Logically, then, their direction to their direct reports probably deprioritizes anime – or doesn’t even take it into account.

But age demographics aren’t the only factor. Anime audiences are also extraordinarily diverse. The same January survey by Polygon found that compared to the general population, anime audiences over index among both Black Americans and Asian Americans, as well as LGBTQ+ viewers. Meanwhile, an assessment of professional profiles of advertising executives in the U.S. found that they’re 71% white. These two factors together suggest that ad industry leadership – largely 40+, largely Caucasian – weren’t raised in a culture that embraced anime as typical and/or mainstream.

It’s worth taking a step back and noting that American audiences have only been truly receptive to Asian content and culture for a few decades, owing largely to longstanding and deep-seeded racism and bias. If you’re over 35 or so, you probably remember a time when sushi wasn’t mainstream. The juggernaut that is Pokemon, the most profitable media franchise of all time (more than Star Wars and Harry Potter combined), has only been around since the ‘90s. And from James Bond to M.A.S.H., classic Western entertainment content typically only included portrayals of Asian characters that were villainous at best and horrifically offensive at worst. 

Getting past these kinds of biases is, obviously, the right thing to do. But it’s also where the money is.

What’s Different About Right Now?

The reason to pay attention to anime right now is that Netflix already is.

The largest streamer in the industry (247.15 million subscribers) has been investing in anime. Here are some clever moves that Netflix has made recently:

• They have a growing library of classic anime content from the last 40-50 years.

   

• More than half of their global base has watched at least one anime production. They are following the money.
• They’ve begun approaching anime via more Western-familiar names, often translating video game content into anime (Castlevania, a classic video game series, has released two critically popular shows. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a key part of the brand’s rehabilitation campaign in 2022).
• Netflix has also begun investing in live action remakes of popular anime, including popular classics Cowboy Bebop and One Piece.
• Finally, Netflix is starting to invest in its own original anime, including the recently released Pluto and Blue-Eyed Samurai. 

It’s likely that these moves are predicated on two pillars. One, the price of production of premium content these days is staggering. Amazon’s recent Lord of the Rings show, after all, cost $465 million for season one. Typically, Netflix doesn’t open up its purse strings that much (with this exception of the $30MM per episode of risk-averse hit Stranger Things). Meanwhile, it’s more likely that a deep backlog of classic anime is much cheaper to acquire.

The second motivator for Netflix is probably that from 2008-2019, the entertainment industry was absolutely dominated by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and a few other superhero franchises. But in a post-Endgame world, the MCU (and other Disney properties) haven’t been able to regain their former position of strength. You could even say they created a vacuum. The average American viewer has turned into someone who likes heroes defeating villains, magic, extra-human abilities, and so on. But Spider-Man fans don’t seem to be latching onto The Marvels or The Eternals. So then what happens?

That’s when viewers start taking out a flier on live-action Netflix anime content. Or video game-related anime content. And these become the entry points for decades of anime content on Netflix, just waiting for users to fall into a very, very slippery, very deep funnel. 

And if the biggest streaming service is going all in on this genre, why wouldn’t we take advantage of that premium attention on other streaming platforms?

What Can Advertisers Do? 

From an advertising perspective, anime viewership represents big numbers, big spending, and a young, diverse audience that any advertiser would be lucky to have. And as an industry, Asian-made media and products should be courted and respected as viable business strategies. Anime audiences are premium customers who deserve the respect of premium service and attention. It’s time.

Luckily, Infillion offers ad buys with major anime streamers like Crunchyroll and Funimation. And we would love to introduce you.

If you’d like to see your brand’s content paired with anime content, reach out today.

Brian Cullen is the Vice President of Strategy at Infillion. His favorite anime is Blue Lock, and he’s currently dabbling in Spy x Family.

It was no surprise to attendees of the POSSIBLE conference in Miami that retail media networks (RMNs) were going to be one of the hottest topics at the event. Walmart Connect, Target’s Roundel network, Albertsons Media Collective, Instacart, and CVS Media Exchange were all partners and sponsors. Panels about loyalty programs, data clean rooms, and e-commerce dotted the packed agenda. 

But at a panel hosted by Infillion and moderated by CRO and CMO Laurel Rossi, a set of leaders from the retail media, CPG, and agency worlds agreed that retail media grew so quickly that it’s now imperative to set it up for long-term stability.

“It’s vast and confusing, to a degree, from the agency side because there are so many different partners with different data sets that we can source from,” said Dave Kersey, chief media officer of GSD&M. “We’re mining through all the various retail media networks trying to figure out what are the right data sets, how can we leverage them, [and] can we overlay them onto each other.” For GSD&M, an Omnicom agency, one current challenge is figuring out how to build retail media data into the holding company’s broader tech stacks.

From the CPG side, there’s a different challenge. “I don’t think we know how to media plan. That’s not a knock on agencies, that’s not a knock on anybody,” said Vinny Rinaldi, head of media and analytics at The Hershey Company. “Somebody who goes to Walmart.com or their app, or Kroger or Albertsons – regardless [of retailer], that is a reach point, that is part of their journey. How do you build that into holistic planning?”

The panel agreed that retail media marketing for CPGs is currently too split between pure brand awareness and sales-driving, lower-funnel efforts with very little in between. “A lot of companies are focused on sales for tomorrow – so anything that will drive sales quickest, even if that’s not best for the long term,” Kersey said. A CPG needs to “ensure that you’re driving brand awareness that is ultimately converting at a more efficient rate downstream.”

Looking at two possible solutions: CTV and generative AI

One company that’s rocketed to the forefront of retail media innovation has been Albertsons Media Collective – a remarkable feat for a nearly century-old grocery store brand. Representing the company on this panel was Evan Hovorka, VP of product and innovation. He said that connected TV is one of the most promising channels for retail media because, unlike linear TV where CPGs’ brand-building ads historically ran, the CTV “pipes” can be connected directly to a retailer’s owned and operated marketing channels.

“Now we’ve got authentic CRM data at the point of ad distribution, the streaming service; and at the point of audience creation, the RMN,” Hovorka explained. “Let’s tie all that together. That is the pinnacle moment for how agencies are best served to help CPG.”

Jatinder Singh, global head of data and AI at Accenture Song, echoed the problem of retail media’s distant two pillars of “brand and demand,” and said that while generative AI technology is frequently talked about as a solution to the two, it’s rarely placed in action. “90% of the C-suite are saying that they expect generative AI to revolutionize their retail media network,” Singh said. “However, research we’ve done shows that only 25% of them are actually doing so.”

Leaders in retail media are beginning to recognize that all the talk of AI to fill gaps in the customer journey needs to be accompanied by real action, especially since there are now so many retail media networks that it can be a tangle of data and touchpoints for marketers.

“The non-standardization that’s created because we’ve become so bifurcated is why you’re seeing everyone say we need to consolidate again,” Rinaldi said. “Everyone acts like there’s an infinite amount of times to convert someone to buy something, and there’s not. If you don’t think about that from a standard media principle or practice…it’s why we’ve become so messy.”

Or, as Infillion’s Laurel Rossi said, “It’s not all about media. Supply matters.”

Let’s say you’re trying to sell enterprise software to CTOs. How do you get your brand in front of them outside of cold pitches and industry conference sponsorships? Could you even run your creative during football games? Until recently, you couldn’t. But now that’s all changing.

Today’s tools for marketers were largely built for what one might call “Big Consumer,” as Infillion CMO and CRO Laurel Rossi calls it. In other words, they were designed for reaching wide demographics and large audiences – so how can B2B marketers work effectively with these same tools? In a panel at the POSSIBLE conference in Miami called “Vertical Ads: How B2B Is Bending The Ecosystem Around Its Needs,” Rossi, who moderated, asked a slate of B2B leaders what they see as the biggest challenges – as well as the most promising solutions.

The challenges, as the panelists illustrated:

Reaching narrow audiences. “You’re dealing with so many small audiences,” said Dan Rosenberg, co-founder and CEO of Octane11. “To find all those individual audiences, titles, job functions, and connect them across all the different places you find them, to make a unified picture…That, I think, is the biggest challenge.”

Dealing with long sales cycles and a disjointed purchase funnel. The sales process in B2B can take “quarters or years,” according to Rosenberg. That can make it difficult to track. Plus, historically B2B marketing has operated at opposite ends of the purchase funnel with very little in between. There’s brand awareness, and then there’s pure lead driving. Jatinder Singh, global head of data and AI at Accenture Song, called this “the bifurcation between brand and demand.”

Software that wasn’t built for them. Out of the dozens of tech tools for marketers out there, few explicitly pitch themselves to B2B marketers or even “Most of the AI solutions in advertising weren’t built with B2B in mind, and are actually sort of opposite to what B2B is trying to do,” said Adam Heimlich, CEO of Chalice.ai.

Extreme fragmentation and lack of transparency. A frustration with non-actionable data and tools that don’t talk to each other, of course, doesn’t only plague B2B marketers. But especially with the “bifurcation” that Singh mentioned, that gulf in the sales cycle can be tough to bridge with incompatible tools. “Let’s be honest, it’s really hard,” said Rich Brandolino, global media channels and ad tech leader at IBM. “The walled gardens really don’t want to share their data.”

But, Infillion’s Rossi promised, the panel would have to actually discuss solutions, too. Here’s what the panelists had to say about what B2B marketers can do in a digital marketing landscape that wasn’t necessarily developed with them in mind.

Seizing upon actionable data. “There’s an enormous wealth of data sitting out there in an unstructured form on the web that you can use to identify customers who have particular problems that they’re trying to work through,” Brandolino said. AI and machine learning can help with that audience-building and targeting, even though most tools weren’t originally built for B2B. Finding the right one can require looking at smaller, more upstart players. “To have oversight over that, and transparency into that, how well the predictions are going, and where the error is, is really a critical piece of it that B2B marketers shouldn’t expect to get from the big tech platforms unfortunately,” Heimlich commented.

Leaning into CTV. “Connected TV is a channel where we can get both the precision and the effectiveness, so we’re hitting on two things there that I think we’re all focusing on with these niche audiences,” said Singh. He added that Accenture, which primarily works with Fortune 2000 companies, successfully deployed a CTV campaign across media like Formula 1 car racing and the NFL using dynamic screens.

Continually refining your toolkit. The face of B2B advertising can transform just as quickly as consumer advertising, and marketers need to be ready. “We’re actually pretty comfortable with our overall stack, but we continue to refine it,” IBM’s Brandolino said, pointing specifically to cookie deprecation and the evolution of identity as a driver for scrutinizing the company’s marketing strategy. “I’m personally convinced that there’s not going to be one solution for all of us, it’s going to be a combination depending on where you’re at.”

B2B marketers should be willing to deploy pilot campaigns to see what works. “There’s no better way than pilots to deal with the conflict between the status quo and new technology,” Chalice.ai’s Heimlich said. “Unfortunately there’s never been a better solution than to take some of your budget and run some pilots, but I can say that in this day and age the pilots are very exciting.”

Looking for B2B solutions to reach the right audience? That precise audience-building and advanced targeting – as well as CTV creative – is right in Infillion’s toolkit. Reach out today.

Infillion spent the past week at POSSIBLE, a brand-new advertising conference – only in its second year – that took over the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. With a focus on brands and the tech companies that are transforming their marketing strategies, the conversations were undoubtedly going to be heavy on retail media and AI. But the nuances of these subjects and more offered an interesting look at some current transitions and inflection points in the ad industry.

Here are the top trends that Infillion’s team observed on the ground.

1. The Retail Media Floodgates Are Open. 

From Home Depot to Albertson’s to Target, retail media networks were front-and-center at POSSIBLE – to no one’s surprise. But some speakers cautioned that today’s rush could cause retail media to run into the same traps that other sectors of digital advertising have wound up in – like ad overload and breaching trust with consumers. 

“There’s now a lot of retail media,” said James Avery, founder and CEO of ad tech company Kevel, in a talk at POSSIBLE. “There’s also, basically, a lot of really crappy retail media.” Retail media, he said, experienced a “Cambrian explosion” when the COVID pandemic hit and “e-commerce expanded about ten years in two months.” That produced a lot of growth, but without much ability to plan for sustainable long-term evolution.

“What is the tradeoff between customer experience and ad revenue?” asked MediaLink managing director Donna Sharp in a panel about retail media and loyalty programs. “If the answer to that question is anything more than zero, it is not worth considering.”

2. AI Isn’t Just a Buzzword Anymore. 

A year or two ago, conversations about artificial intelligence – especially generative AI – at a conference like POSSIBLE would’ve been big and theoretical. Now, marketers want to move on to talking about how it actually can be used to boost their business. The big area of interest: audience building and targeting. Jatinder Singh, global head of data and AI at Accenture Song, said that he’s using generative AI to precisely identify the Fortune 2000 executives who are candidates for Accenture’s business services. “We’re using generative AI to get insights into those audiences so we know what to communicate,” he explained in a panel about B2B marketing.

Brands at POSSIBLE were also being explicit about setting their boundaries with AI. “It’s a rethink of everything that we’re doing in this space,” said Cheryl Guerin, EVP of global brand strategy and innovation at MasterCard, in a fireside chat. “Do you want avatars representing your brand? The answer for us is no. We’re human, authentic, and genuine, and therefore that’s not a place we want to go.”

3. Marketers Have Tons of Data. Now What? 

The deprecation of third-party cookies left brands and retailers looking for alternatives. Many of them found that they had a trove of first-party customer data at their fingertips – the challenge is now what to do with it. “We create more data as a society globally every year than every stitch of data created since man first lit a fire, and that’s how fast and how exponentially data is growing,” said David A. Steinberg, co-founder and CEO of Zeta Global, in a Group Black-hosted panel about using AI and data innovations to reach diverse audiences. “What most enterprises do not know how to do is turn that into growth. Most organizations today continue to collect data for what we call data’s sake.”

4. Latin America Comes into Focus. 

With many U.S. brands’ and agencies’ LatAm headquarters located in Miami, marketing and ad tech in the region would inevitably be a hot topic at POSSIBLE – especially for those that have already realized the cultural and economic power of the U.S. Hispanic market. “The two biggest unifiers are music and sports,” Lionfish Entertainment CEO and founder Rebeca León said of the full integration of Latin culture into the U.S. mainstream.

Plus, the timing is right for U.S.-based marketers to take notice. The digital advertising infrastructure, especially when it comes to programmatic media, is changing fast. Regarding digital out-of-home (DOOH), Rafael Krausz, JCDecaux’s head of agencies and programmatic for the Brazil market said in a DPAA-hosted panel, “One year ago we couldn’t say we had programmatic, and now we’re very happy that over 100 advertisers in Brazil can say that.”

There are also more entry points for global advertisers. Interpublic Group’s Mediahub, for example, only just launched its LatAm arm last year. “The full-service agency solution is new to the industry in Latin America,” Mediahub Latin America regional president Yamilet Bermudez said in the same DPAA event. She stressed the power of precise programmatic audience building and targeting to identify the right audiences in a region where language, dialect, economic status, and even the season can vary wildly throughout a single country.

5. Omnichannel Is Over. Now Everything Is a Channel. 

Panels and discussions about brands’ ability to connect with audiences in an ad-saturated world stressed the fact that those potential touchpoints are now everywhere, including in places that would not have been accessible to brands before – music festivals, art exhibits, creators’ social media accounts, and more. “They need to turn culture into commerce,” Univision Television Networks Group president Ignacio Meyer said of brands in a panel about Latin culture. “They need to take advantage of the fact that culture is the most important driving force.” It all comes down to finding an authentic fit – it can be anywhere, but it has to be the right scenario and moment. That’s where hyper-precise targeting and AI-powered ad customization an come in as an asset to brands.

In a panel about sports and culture, former NBA player and ESPN commentator Jay Williams said of sports media in particular, “It’s drastically different. I’m seeing [player-hosted] podcasts done right after games. Ten years ago that was a no-no.” On the same panel, NBA CMO Tammy Henault spoke to the league’s breakthrough into broader culture. “The NBA will show up as a brand at Coachella,” she said. “The tunnel walk is the new runway for fashion.”

Brands can be risk-averse, but a post-omnichannel world offers them the chance to take creative leaps and get to the forefront of the conversation. “Brands miss the opportunity to be in front of the culture because they’re chasing it rather than creating it,” Lionfish Entertainment’s Rebeca León said.

Infillion’s product suite helps brands elevate their media, messaging, and strategy. Learn more about our cutting-edge digital marketing by scheduling some time to talk to our team.

Inclusivity for people with disabilities isn’t just a nice gesture: it’s good business. According to research from Accenture, a company that takes a leading role in key inclusion criteria for employees with disabilities brings in 2.6 times more net income and twice as much economic profit than one that doesn’t. Yet Accenture research has also found that 76% of employees with disabilities do not fully disclose those disabilities at work, indicating that there is still a considerable sense of stigma or fear of retaliation.

“We need to make the organizational and cultural changes. We are collectively responsible for making that happen,” said Jatinder Singh, Accenture Song’s global head of data and AI and board member of workplace disability inclusion nonprofit Creative Spirit, in a panel this month at the Advertising Club of New York’s annual women’s masterclass event. 

Infillion CMO and Creative Spirit co-founder Laurel Rossi moderated this panel, where in addition to Singh she was joined by Rachel Lowenstein, founder of Autistic Out Loud and Global Head of Inclusive Innovation at Mindshare; Tristen Norman, Director of Creative at Getty Images; and Laura Mignott, Global Chief Experiential Officer at VML Commerce.

From employees to whole humans.

Lowenstein and Mignott both identify as disabled; Lowenstein is autistic and Mignott has dyslexia. Both of them talked about the fears they faced disclosing their disabilities. Lowenstein spent years “masking” her autism, a phenomenon which she explained has “really damaging psychological effects” and left her in a place where “I didn’t have an identity that was fully my own” because she’d felt she had to be so performative to fit in within professional settings. Mignott explained that she struggles to read content on slides while giving presentations, but that she was afraid to explain that she was dyslexic so her colleagues always thought her insistence on memorizing presentations was “one of my kind of funky and weird quirks.”

But both Lowenstein and Mignott realized that by discussing their disabilities publicly at work, they could make others feel safer about disclosing their own – or even realizing that they had a disability in the first place, given the high levels of undiagnosed neurodivergence especially among underrepresented groups. “Not everyone knows that they are actually neurodiverse. They might think the challenges they’ve been having within the organization is that they’re just not ‘getting it,’” Mignott said. 

“I’m a firm believer that we do our best work when we bring our whole selves to work,” Lowenstein said.

And beyond disability, feeling safe bringing that whole self to work – your entire constellation of stories and identities – makes the whole workplace better. Tristen Norman, who has taken a leadership role in multiple Getty Images initiatives to increase representation of people from historically marginalized groups in the company’s imagery and stock photography, discussed her story as an Afro-Latina and her openness about her identity at work. “It’s because I have shared so much of myself that people feel a lot more comfortable sharing themselves with me, so that I can help lift them up and help them be successful. The moment that you’re vulnerable, other people want to be vulnerable back.”

How workplaces are effecting change for employees with disabilities.

So what can employers do to make sure employees with disabilities don’t just feel safe with their identities at work, but get the resources they need?

First, disclosure of disabilities shouldn’t be mandated – especially since when it comes to neurodivergence, many employees struggling with it may not even know they are neurodivergent or have a full diagnosis. “We don’t need to create a culture where people feel like they can disclose, we need to create a culture where people feel like they belong whether they disclose or not,” Lowenstein said. “If you create space for neurodivergent people to thrive, and people with disabilities to thrive, you will reap those rewards ten times over.”

Jatinder Singh talked about Accenture’s Accessibility Lab project, which now has facilities in 40 of its offices around the world where employees can go and request accommodations for any variety of disability, physical or neurodivergent. ““A colleague in Manila went and said, ‘I need something to help me do my work,’ and so that accommodation was made and out of that came the genesis [of Accessibility Lab],” Singh explained. The program was formally created, he said, because “if there’s one person out of a 700,000-person organization asking for help, there must be more.”

But at the same time, Singh explained, Accessibility Lab is “open to everyone, you don’t have to disclose, it’s very confidential.”

Rachel Lowenstein talked about how Mindshare’s parent company WPP is launching a training program for neurodiverse leadership. “Accessible workplaces broadly affect and support everybody,” she said.

And Laura Mignott touched upon a particular priority for the advertising industry, known for its frequent M&A and consolidations – which she knows well, given VML’s recent merger and rebrand. “Having empathetic leadership as things change” is key, she said. In the midst of extensive corporate transition, disabled and neurodivergent employees may wonder, “What happens to me? What happens to our [employee resource groups]?” What’s important is that “no matter where you are across the agency you’re still being listened to and heard.”

But this doesn’t have to be an overly intricate process, Mignott explained.

“Just include people! This is not complicated. Inclusivity means including more people,” she said. “When you think about anything that has been designed for inclusivity, it actually helps everybody, so start there.”

Read more about Infillion’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion here, and reach out to get involved with our Inclusion Cafe activation at Cannes Lions 2024.