Brkthru

There's nothing more rewarding than when a happy client shares their feelings. Thanks Andrew Mendez-Spera, MS CTA. We're honored to be a partner of Tipsy Social! https://lnkd.in/eeBzBv6u

Brkthru Mid-Summer Hub Hangouts! Brkthru employees beat the summer heat by gathering recently in their respective cities for our Hub Hangouts. The Charlotte hub had a great time enjoying St. Louis style pizza. It was this North Carolina hub’s biggest turn out yet. For its July hangout, our Cincinnati hub enjoyed relaxing pedicures and conversation, and after headed out to indulge in Brkthru employees' favorite day of the month - Pizza Friday! Our Tampa hub had a great time bowling, having appetizers and endless conversation that made for a fun few hours. This hub welcomed its newest hub member, and two hub members realized they graduated from the same high school (one year apart). Rumor has it, the conversation was so great the bowling alley told this hub they were bowling too slow. Our Hub Hangouts are an opportunity for groups of Brkthru employees in 19 hubs across the country to get together once a month at a location of their choosing to socialize and spend quality time together. If joining a team of professionals who come to work every day to manage successful digital media campaigns for their clients and still take time to socialize and spend time together sounds interesting, it is. Check out our open positions at https://lnkd.in/gaBappWZ

The Cookie Is Still Dying by Joe Leverone, Director of Media Services Google announced on July 23 they finally gave up trying to get rid of cookies in Chrome. Many twists and turns, delays, failed experiments, and lawsuits have led to this moment. Lost in the headlines, however, is that the cookie is still dying – just not how we expected. “We are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice,” Google said. “Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.” Anyone who owns an iPhone will find this familiar. As part of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT), phone users have been provided a prompt when opening an app, allowing them to opt out of personalized advertising. In short, this prevents apps from tracking people’s activities across other apps and websites to then be used for targeting. Estimates suggest the opt-out rates could be as high as 80% when a user receives the prompts. If Google takes the same path as Apple, which seems likely, the cookie will still die. It won’t happen on a single day, and there won’t be an immediate replacement, but cookie pools will slowly dwindle as users inevitably opt out in large numbers. Imagine that it’s March 2025. Google has implemented the ability to easily opt out of being tracked. A data segment has now lost approximately 80% of trackable users. Firefox and Safari automatically opt users out of cookies. Those still paying to target users using cookies are actually paying more to reach less people. An overwhelming positive for the industry with anticipation of the cookie’s demise has been the number of privacy-centric targeting solutions that have come to market. There are a variety of ways to reach these same coveted users, at scale, without using a dying technology. At Brkthru, we have been planning for this moment for several years, and have a bevy of tools at our disposal to make sure our clients don’t feel a stunning impact to this industry change. If you need to stay up-to-speed on all that’s happening in digital media, reach out to Brkthru. We’re on it 24/7.

View our latest podcast “30 minutes w/Brkthru: The Hot 2024 Political Season” to review how this year’s record spend will impact advertising campaigns. Predicted to top $12.32 BILLION, this avalanche of money will lead to tightening inventories, increasing rates, bumped schedules – and will affect all advertisers, agencies and marketers. Two digital media experts from Brkthru, Director of Sales Development Matt Zornes and Strategy Manager Morgan Stroyeck, share their observations, insights and a few recommendations for how digital media can get you and your campaigns through the next few months. https://lnkd.in/e9CdiQwx

Brkthru Summer Client Success Offsite in Detroit! Nearly 50 Brkthru team members from client success, sales development, business development, marketing and sales leadership met in Detroit last week for an informative and energetic Summer Client Success Offsite. On the agenda were an update on digital platforms, sharing client success stories, the state of streaming video, marketing support and of course, some fun social time to connect with colleagues from across the country. The two-day meeting was held at Brkthru’s recently opened 7,000-square foot Detroit Training Center in Southfield, MI. The facility was designed as the hub for all Brkthru department offsites and our ongoing Brkthru U training program for new employees, and as home to our business development and IT teams. Most importantly during the Client Success Offsite, the team focused on a continued commitment to the exceptional level of service we at Brkthru provide to our clients.    If this type of hands-on collaboration with other sales and business development pros piques your interest, swing on over to our Careers page to check out the open positions: https://lnkd.in/gaBappWZ

Want to reach the LGBTQ+ market and make your Pride month more genuine? Hear from two well-known and respected leaders.

Advertisers: Be Authentically Proud Year-Round How can you better reach the LGBTQ+ market during Pride and every month, and be even more genuine and authentic? Hear from two well-known and respected leaders in media and LGBTQ market: Jeff Hastedt, Brkthru Co-Founder & Managing Director and Todd Evans, President & CEO, Rivendell Media discuss brands that have gotten it right, and a few that could do a better job. A few thoughts: ·      Show your brand’s support year-round. Don’t just change your logo to a multi-colored background for a month as an easy marketing ploy. ·      Make a charitable donation. Give to a relevant organization or good cause that helps to provide resources, supports or helps to the gay or LGBTQ community. ·      Avoid “rainbow washing.” And if your company makes a mistake, own up to it and apologize. ·      Foster an environment in your own company where everyone can be their authentic selves every day. Brands that acknowledge and respect LGBTQ+ demand will be ready to claim greater market share. If you are an advertisers or marketer interested in showing your support this Pride and every month, reach out to us Brkthru. We’ve successfully managed hundreds of digital advertising campaigns reaching the LGBTQ+ community. And, along with partners like Rivendell Media - with more than 40 years of experience representing 95% of LGBTQ media – we work with advertisers and agencies to reach LGBTQ community every day. https://lnkd.in/erS2fFT6

Brkthru On the Road: What’s Growing @ NLGS ‘24 Brkthru Director of Client Success Ben Coburn attended the 2024 National Lawn and Garden Show this week in St. Louis, meeting with retailers and manufacturers serving the $130-billion US lawn and garden category. At the three-day event were hundreds of buyers with multi-unit independent garden centers, farm and fleet stores, regional chains, department stores, wholesalers, distributors and e-commerce retailers. They came to see new products and services in garden tools and machinery, landscaping services and supplies, garden decor and accessories, pest control products and more. It’s an industry we know well - the average American spends $1,200 to $2,400 per year on lawn care and landscaping - with most of that happening during the crucial Spring-Summer growing season. Ben shared Brkthru’s experience using digital media tactics to reach homeowners, property owners and lawn and landscape professionals on behalf of retailers and servicing dealers, and the product manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers who get those products to market. Although we just marked the official start of Summer, the lawn & garden industry and Brkthru are already looking ahead to the 2025 growing season. If you are a lawn and garden advertiser, or agency serving clients in the category, we at Brkthru are eager to have a conversation. Reach us info@brkthru.com

Brkthru Media Team in the Motor City! The 48-member team of Brkthru media dynamos gathered at our Detroit Training Center this week for their summer department offsite. Theirs was the first department offsite at our recently opened 7,000-square foot facility in Southfield, MI. “This week, the Brkthru Media team got together for our annual department offsite,” said Brkthru Vice President of Media Tom Leone. “It’s always wonderful to meet in person, and this time it was at our brand-new Detroit Training Center.” During their meetings, the team emphasized the importance of thinking beyond the metrics by emphasizing tangible business results for our clients. By leveraging Brkthru's platform agnostic approach, collaboration across Search, Social and Programmatic, they can make an even greater impact to our client’s bottom line. “Of course, no offsite is complete without some fun on the water,” Leone continued. “On Thursday night, we set sail on the Detroit Princess for some food, drinks and a lot of laughs!”

Shut out of advertising in live sports? Brkthru gets you back in the game with streaming sports opportunities reaching millions of live sports viewers across the country. In our video podcast “30 Minutes w/Brkthru: Streaming Sports,” veteran industry pros talk about the disruption in regional sports networks, the non-network entities that outbid others for programming rights, escalating costs that shut local advertisers and agencies out of advertising in live sports, and how Brkthru has a unique solution of streaming digital properties. Click to this informative video podcast featuring Brkthru President Jonathan Mellinger (he/him) Mellinger and VP of Sales Development Nathan Foster: https://lnkd.in/eE5KZ8Nh