Our top stories include a look at why hashtag-hustle has taken over the industry, how Amazon continues its blitz on the ad industry and an autopsy for Defy Media.

‘Welcome to #Hustletown’: How hustle culture took over advertising
Hustle is everywhere. It’s on t-shirts that read “Eat. Sleep. Hustle”; it’s on tote bags sold for $25 on Etsy so it can be publicly known that you don’t just work hard, you have a higher calling. It’s painted on walls inside offices. There’s even an IPG agency named Hustle.

How The Knot uses content to grow consumer revenue three ways
Couples’ wedding needs haven’t changed much over the years. But as digital advertising has become harder to come by, wedding-focused publisher The Knot has been courting small businesses for its vendor marketplace with more services and pushing harder on commerce content.

‘We wanted people to know we were big’: How Defy Media went from YouTube heavyweight to abrupt shutdown
Life was good for Defy Media in early 2017. The digital media company behind YouTube heavyweights such as Smosh and Clevver had just raised a $70 million Series B round the previous fall. It was scouting snazzy production facilities to move into in Los Angeles, and it had just hired the design firm Collins to redo its logo heading into that spring’s NewFronts.

Confessions of a data scientist: ‘Marketers don’t know what they’re asking for’
In the latest installment of our Confessions series, where we exchange anonymity for honesty, Digiday spoke with a data scientist inside the marketing department of a company who says marketers are still lost when it comes to the science and are wasting money on data scientists.
 

In bid for survival, Office Depot focuses on business services and subscriptions
In the age of Amazon, Office Depot is using its 1,400 retail stores and 50,000-plus staff to focus on higher-margin services, with a focus on catering to businesses. The retailer reported third-quarter overall sales revenues of $2.9 billion, up 10 percent from the same period last year; retail sales, however, were down 6 percent. Growth was driven instead from Office Depot’s Business Services Division, which saw sales grow 6 percent, and service revenues, which grew by 28 percent. It’s an indication of where the company will continue to focus competitive efforts as it bolsters its position against e-commerce players and other large traditional retailers.

Amazon’s move to New York shows how serious it is about advertising
Amazon’s move to New York is an indication of how serious the company may be about its burgeoning ads business — and may lead to a new talent crisis for agencies. The Seattle-based company, which announced that New York City and Arlington, Virginia, will be two new hubs, will invest $5 billion and open 50,000 new jobs across the two cities. This follows a new office in Manhattan that opened under a year ago that brought 2,000 jobs, mostly in advertising, to the city and closer to Madison Avenue.

Facebook is shutting down its connected-TV ad network
Facebook’s effort to extend its ad business to the television screen is running into problems. Two years after Facebook extended its Audience Network ad network to the connected-TV market, Facebook is shutting down the connected-TV side of its ad network and will stop selling ads inside publishers’ OTT apps by January 2019, according to a company spokesperson. 

Ahead of ad products, TikTok is the hot new app that ad agencies are eyeing
TikTok, the short-form video app that combined with Musical.ly in August, has yet to launch ad units for brands or formal monetization products for creators. But over the last month, agencies have been paying closer attention to the app.

Brands are hiring specialists to run Amazon campaigns
Advertisers want to take management of their Amazon ad campaigns in-house, and they’re looking to hire people who can navigate Amazon’s sprawling ad business. These companies don’t want to do the buying themselves, but want to set strategies so that their agencies can handle the execution just like they do for search ads on Google and posts on Facebook. The likes of Vodafone and eBay have search managers running Google ad campaigns, while Philips and Nissan do the same for Facebook.