• YouTube's Partner Program allows influencers to earn money off their channels by placing ads within videos. 
• Google filters these ads and pays a creator based on factors like a video's watch time, length, and viewer demographic.
• Business Insider spoke to two YouTube creators, Shelby Church and Alyssa Kulani, about what each earned from videos with 4 million views. 
• Sign up for Business Insider's influencer newsletter, Influencer Dashboard, to get more stories like this in your inbox. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

How much money a creator earns from a YouTube video varies depending on a number of factors, from where the viewers are located to which advertisers the video attracts.

Some top YouTube creators have specific strategies for earning the most money from a single video, including looking at the back end of their channels to determine where the best ad placements are for them. Others simply get lucky, with videos promoted by YouTube's algorithm and recommended to viewers.

But generally, when a video goes viral, the creator is in for a serious payday. Business Insider spoke to two YouTube influencers, Shelby Church and Alyssa Kulani, who broke down how much they earned from videos with 4 million views.

Shelby Church — $15,000

YouTube star Shelby Church, who has 1.3 million subscribers, told Business Insider that she recently earned $15,000 from a YouTube video with 4.1 million views— the most she's ever made from a single video in nine years as a creator.

Her video, titled, "This Is How Much YouTube Paid Me For My 1,000,000 Viewed Video (not clickbait),"is about how much YouTube paid her for a previous video with 1 million views.

"I really thought the video would get 100,000 views, not 4 million," she said. "Once I saw that it hit a million, it honestly scared me."

Her ad placement strategy: 

Church said she usually includes one pre-roll ad before the video, which she said is the default on YouTube, and two ads within the video, three or four minutes apart. Her videos are typically about 10 to 12 minutes long.

The key to earning the most from these ads is to place them before your viewers will typically "drop off," or click off from your video, she said, and she's noticed viewers will often drop off early if there's a long intro.

Read the full post here: YouTube star Shelby Church breaks down how much money a video with 4 million views made her

Alyssa Kulani – $23,000

The Canadian YouTube creator Alyssa Kulani, who has 676,000 subscribers, broke down for Business Insider how she made $23,000 in ad revenue from a single YouTube video.

Kulani's video, titled, "Telling my best friend I like him...*PRANK*," was picked up and recommended by YouTube's algorithm, which prompted the video to go viral and gain 4 million views. 

"I posted that video, and I think it was around January when my first paycheck came," she told Business Insider. "My jaw dropped because of how much money I made off just AdSense."

Why she earned so much:

Kulani has a relatively high CPM (cost per 1,000 views) rate – usually between $5 and $10, she said — because she doesn't use profanity or songs that are copyrighted.

She also said she optimized her ad revenue by sometimes placing an ad break before something suspenseful is about to happen.

Read the full post here: How a 20-year-old YouTube creator earned $23,000 in ad revenue from a single video

For more on the economics of an influencer career, according to YouTube and Instagram stars, check out these Business Insider Prime posts:

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Behind the scenes with Shepard Smith — the Fox News star who just announced his resignation from the network

• Amazon has confirmed it will shut down a program that lets advertisers include samples in people's orders.
• The program requires advertisers to spend a minimum of $50,000 for 25,000 samples, said Laura Meyer, the founder and CEO of the e-commerce agency Envision Horizons.
• The program has raised privacy concerns because Amazon uses people's shopping data to send the samples.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Amazon says it's ending a sampling program that some shoppers saw as creepy.

Under the program, advertisers paid to send shoppers free products included with their orders. The program used machine learning and predictive analytics to crunch Amazon data and identify consumers who were likely to try products.

In January, Axios reported that Amazon was expanding the program. Amazon used a pilot program with brands including Folgers and Maybelline to differentiate its advertising business from Facebook and Google with physical products and retail data.

Dunkin', Kind, and Quaker have also participated in the program, according to Amazon's website. Consumer-packaged-goods brands represent Amazon's biggest advertisers.

An Amazon representative confirmed that the program would shut down in early 2020.

"Amazon is constantly testing and launching new offerings to innovate on behalf of customers," the person said. "At this time, we have decided to discontinue the sampling program in 2020."

Amazon described the program on its site as recommendations and said customers didn't review the products or pay for them. "It's like Amazon's product recommendations, but real, so you can try, smell, feel, and taste the latest products," the website says.

Laura Meyer, the founder and CEO of the Amazon-focused ad agency Envision Horizons, said Amazon charged $2 a sample in addition to the cost of the samples. The program requires advertisers to buy a minimum of 25,000 samples, equivalent to $50,000.

The sampling program is a small part of Amazon's ad business

Amazon doesn't publicize the sampling program in its $11 billion advertising business, but it is mentioned in Amazon Advertising's terms and conditions.

Amazon primarily sells advertisers ads that run on its own site and app as well as a demand-side platform that places ads on third-party publishers and over-the-top placements within Amazon Fire TV and IMDb TV.

Outside its advertising business, Amazon offers other types of sampling programs that are managed by teams like merchandising and business development. For example, Meyer said a client who makes baby products ran a program with Amazon's baby-registry team that sent samples to shoppers who created an account.

Some consumers see the program as creepy

Amazon's sampling program has raised privacy concerns for some shoppers. The company uses its data to guess what products consumers are likely to buy, and some on social media called the program creepy.

Others said on social media that the samples were well-targeted based on products they already would buy.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 5 things about the NFL that football fans may not know

• Brooklyn-based Colossal Media creates photo-realistic murals as ads for major brands like Google, Nike, and Coca-Cola.
• Colossal's in-house creative studio works with a brand to come up with the artwork.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcription of the video.

Narrator: This isn't a photograph. And neither is this one. These are hand-painted billboards on the walls of New York City.

Nicole Greco-Lucchina: It looks like you can drink the beer off the wall, eat the sandwich off the wall.

Narrator: Brooklyn-based Colossal Media creates these photo-realistic murals as ads for major brands like Google, Nike, and Coca-Cola. And they can cost up to $150,000. We got a look inside Colossal's colorful workshop to see how painters bring these once bygone masterpieces to life.

Large-scale billboards first popped up in the 1830s. The tough painters that hung from buildings through all kinds of weather were affectionately nicknamed wall dogs. Their heyday came in the 1920s, when hand-painted ads for everything from Coca-Cola to cold medicines dotted the walls of New York City. By the mid-1900s, the industry started drying up. First, electric signs took over in popularity.

Then, the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 heavily regulated hand-painted billboards. Despite the artistry of the wall dogs' work, their walls weren't considered art; they were advertisements. And as such, the walls were subject to these new regulations. Around the same time, faster vinyl-printed billboards began replacing time-consuming hand-painted ones. Wall dogs and their walls were obsolete.

But a handful of niche artists quietly kept the craft alive. Until 2004, when best friends and street-sign artists Paul Lindahl and Adrian Moeller started Colossal Media. With a team of 31 artists, Colossal ushered in a mainstream comeback for hand-painted murals. And big brands took notice.

It all starts here, at this Brooklyn workshop, which is basically a work of art itself. First, Colossal's in-house creative studio works with a brand to come up with the artwork. Graphic designers will drop that finalized artwork into Photoshop and break it down into layers based on color, form, and value changes.

Greco-Lucchina: When we're done breaking that down, we drop it into a template, which scales it to the size of the wall. It's gridded into 4-by-8-foot boxes for however big the wall is.

Narrator: A laminated version of the gridded image becomes the road map for the whole project. First, the road map heads downstairs. The color mixers blend a rainbow of paint shades to try and match the colors on the road map. Sometimes they get a match pretty quickly. Other times, it takes a lot of patience and a lot of paint. Nicole estimates the artists go through about 50,000 gallons of paint a year.

Greco-Lucchina: This is the mixing room. It has a green-roof ceiling, and that is so they're mixing as true to daylight as possible.

Narrator: But even if they have the perfect paint, how do these artists transfer an image from a computer to a wall? The secret lies here, in the dark room. Artists unfurl a massive roll of paper and project a wall-sized version of the road map on it. In a process known as burning, artists transfer the projection onto the paper using an electro-pounce machine.

Greco-Lucchina: You're essentially tracing, and as you're tracing, it's burning a bunch of tiny holes into the paper, which we call the patterns.

Narrator: They're left with a giant outline of the image in tiny burned-in holes. This is the key to producing those photo-realistic murals.

Greco-Lucchina: When the guys get out to the wall, they unroll that paper in sequence, and in a process called pouncing, which essentially is like charcoal powder in a rag, they hit it in those places that we burned on the pattern, and the charcoal transfers through those tiny holes on the wall, and that's how the image gets transferred to scale on the wall with the details that we broke down.

Narrator: The artists will draw over that powered tracing with a marker or pencil. They now have a detailed outline of the image on the wall.

Greco-Lucchina: From there, between the road map, what they have pounced on the wall, they're ready to go.

Narrator: Where they start painting is up to the artists. Usually, newer artists take larger areas, while expert painters take on details, like hands and eyes. Painting usually takes four to five days, but bigger walls sometimes mean up to 12-hour days on 10-day assignments. And the painters work through any kind of weather: rain, heat waves, and even polar vortexes. It's a tough spirit that finds its roots with wall dogs of the '20s.

Ian Potter: To be a true wall dog, you need to be able to do all of that. So, the rigging, the construction side of it, the painting side, the breakdown, all of that physical labor, plus you gotta be a pretty d--- good artist to paint all of that, as well.

Narrator: With how much planning and detail goes into each wall, it's no surprise these ads can cost a lot. Colossal's walls tend to range from $35,000 to $150,000, depending on the size. Even with a steep price tag and lengthy turnarounds, big brands don't seem to mind waiting. Today, Colossal paints over 500 murals a year in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, LA, and, of course, New York City.

Rina Kim: It's definitely becoming more of an experience rather than you just passing by a flat billboard. Our painters who are working on-site are catching the eyes of any passersby, people who drive by, and then they share it on social media and create a new level of interaction within advertising.

Narrator: But ever since the heavy regulation of wall dogs and their walls first came down, one question has circled the industry: Are these advertisements art?

Potter: The fact that it's advertisements, I mean, yes, we're trying to replicate what somebody else gave us, but we're doing it in our own way. I, quite frankly, think you have to be a tradesman and a craftsman to do this correctly, but you also have to be an artist to do it.

Narrator: And a highly skilled one at that, considering just how realistic they look.

Join the conversation about this story »

• Papa John's founder and former CEO, John Schnatter, slammed the pizza chain in an interview with WDRB News, a Fox affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky.
• "I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days," Schnatter told WDRB News. "And it's not the same pizza. It's not the same product. It just doesn't taste as good."
• He also slammed Papa John's leaders, saying that they had "destroyed the company" and that "the day of reckoning will come."
• Schnatter resigned as Papa John's chairman in 2018 after admitting to using the N-word during a company conference call earlier that year.
• Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru, to get more stories like this in your inbox.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Papa John's former CEO slammed the pizza chain he founded in an interview with a local news outlet.

"I've had over 40 pizzas in the last 30 days," John Schnatter told WDRB News, a Fox affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky, in an interview this week. "And it's not the same pizza. It's not the same product. It just doesn't taste as good."

Schnatter resigned as Papa John's chairman in 2018 after admitting to using the N-word during a company conference call earlier that year. The Papa John's founder had stepped down as CEO in December 2017 following backlash for his criticism of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest police brutality.

In the WDRB News interview, Schnatter described his ousting as a "farce." He slammed Papa John's new leaders, including Steve Ritchie, who replaced him as CEO, and the board members Olivia Kirtley and Mark Shapiro, both of whom Schnatter said "should be in jail."

"They stole the company, and now they've destroyed the company," Schnatter said.

Schnatter told WDRB News that he believes the truth about his ousting has yet to emerge.

"The day of reckoning will come," Schnatter said.

Papa John's did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The interview went viral after the writer Timothy Burke tweeted a clip in which Schnatter's voice appears to have been slowed down.

"Papa john has f---ing HAD IT,"Chrissy Teigen tweeted.

Watch the full WDRB News interview »

SEE ALSO: A historically black college in Kentucky has found itself in the middle of a bizarre feud between Papa John's and its ousted founder

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Rare Italian white truffles cost over $4,000 per kilo — here's why real truffles are so expensive

• Most DTC brands are not seeking billion-dollar valuations, but are chasing profitability, global expansion and diverse media channels, according to new research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
• The average annual sales revenue for DTC brands is estimated to soar 85% from 2018 to 2020, and it's going to come at the expense of incumbent brands, IAB research found. 
• DTC brands see e-commerce giants like Amazon and Wayfair and other DTC companies as their biggest competitors, according to the IAB's Founders Benchmark Study — not the incumbents.
• While majority of them launched on social channels (62%), they were growing spend across media channels like search (67%) and display (65%) advertising, ahead of social media (64%).
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Direct-to-consumer upstarts like Dollar Shave Club and Kylie Cosmetics sold stakes in their businesses to Unilever and Coty, respectively, but most DTC brands are not seeking billion-dollar valuations or quick flips to bigger incumbents, new research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau found.

According to the research from the IAB, digital advertising's biggest trade group, an overwhelming majority of DTC disruptors (90%) report they are profitable, are looking to expand globally, and using a range of media channels to grow.

The findings come from two studies that the IAB is set to release at its Direct Brand Summit in New York November 20 and build on earlier research by the IAB, which has expanded its membership to include direct brands as well as incumbents. They would seem to counter skeptics who say most DTC companies are still tiny and unprofitable and on their own, don't pose a significant threat to packages goods powerhouses like P&G.

"Disruptor Brands: Founders Benchmark Study" is based on inputs from more than 200 DTC founders and leadership teams on their strategies, capabilities, and goals; and "Direct Brands: Media & Customer Acquisition" digs into DTC brands' media and customer acquisition strategies based on a survey of 330 media buyers.

"We all went into this with the assumption that similar to ad tech or digital publishing, DTC founders are using easy access to capital and functional supply chains to launch companies and try to get to them to a position where they can easily flip them," said Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. "That is not the case."

DTC brands are building viable long-term businesses 

Instead, the Founders Benchmark Study suggests that the vast majority of DTC brands aim to build long-term businesses and are prioritizing profitability and customer satisfaction ahead of market share, said Rothenberg. 

Among the key findings: 

• Only 15% of respondents cited acquisition as a long-term goal.
• DTC brands are also eyeing global expansion, with more than a third of the respondents (34%) saying that global expansion is a top priority.
• Other priorities include establishing a new category (31%) and opening brick-and-mortar locations (30%).
• 77% of direct brands take less than 6 months to launch a new product.

The report found that the average annual sales revenue for respondents is estimated to grow 85% between 2018 and 2020, outpacing established brands in their categories. While US personal care and beauty product sales grew only 4.5% in 2018, for example, online personal care and beauty sales grew 24%, according to the IAB. 

The biggest takeaway from the reports is that incumbent brands will have to take a page out of the DTC playbook and build two-way relationships with their consumers using data, as the IAB has also warned previously, Rothenberg said.

"They all need to embrace the fact that they're not in the CPG, makeup or luggage business, but in the content, experience, service, data and, relationship business as well," he said. 

Amazon continues to be a frenemy

DTC companies see e-commerce giants like Amazon and Wayfair and other DTC companies, not incumbents, as their biggest competitors, according to the Founders Benchmark Study.

Fully 55% of respondents said they don't actively sell on Amazon, with 26% saying they were testing or planning to test the platform, and 29% saying they didn't plan to use it at all, not even for testing.

"The hypothesis would be that disruptor brands would name the big incumbent brands as their competitors, but it's Amazon," said Rothenberg. "Even Nike ending its sale pilot with Amazon is a sign that it's far too important to have direct personal relationships with customers."

DTC brands are also diversifying their media channels 

After spending millions of dollars building their businesses on Facebook and Instagram, DTC brands are branching out to other channels like TV and long-form video content.

IAB research confirmed this shift, with buyers saying that after getting their start on social channels (62%), direct brands were growing across channels like search (67%) and display (65%) advertising, ahead of social media (64%). With the streaming wars starting, expect more media dollars to go toward the streaming platforms in the near future, said Rothenberg.

Buyers also reported that direct brands also were spending on offline channels like direct mail (63%), print (62%) and television (58%). Further, the Media & Customer Acquisition report found that:

• Brick-and-mortar stores are on the rise, with two in five DTC brands owning at least one physical store.
• DTC brands' reliance on paid media is also decreasing, with 72% respondents saying they think they can go dark on paid at least for some time.
• More than a quarter (27%) of surveyed brands said they had brought ad buying in-house.
• DTC brands are expected to increase programmatic ad spending to 50% of their media buying in 2020 from 47% in 2019.
• Of the nearly two-thirds of buyers (64%) that reported using attribution models for direct brands, more than half said (56%) they relied on first-touch models, suggesting room for improvement in this area.

"An interesting finding was that customer satisfaction eclipsed customer acquisition in terms of what's driving media buys for advertisers, which is the opposite of what you'd expect," said Sue Hogan, SVP of research and analytics at IAB. "It boils down to their biggest strength: That one-on-one understanding of how to build a customer relationship."

SEE ALSO: Comcast Ventures is training startups like Away and Hippo to become TV advertisers and says they're spending millions of dollars a year on TV

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: People are still debating the pink or grey sneaker, 2 years after it went viral. Here's the real color explained.

• Tiffany & Co. made history on Monday after it was purchased by the luxury conglomerate LVMH in a record-breaking $16.2 billion deal. 
• Tiffany has been a beloved fixture in American culture and society for nearly two centuries, beginning as a fine goods and stationery store in 1837. 
• We took a closer look at Tiffany's iconic rise to dominance. 
• Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After nearly two centuries of outfitting America's most stylish and influential figures with bedazzled accoutrements, Tiffany & Co. made history this week when it was purchased by LVMH in its most expensive acquisition to date. 

On Monday, the luxury conglomerate announced it had struck a deal to purchase the iconic jeweler for a whopping $16.2 billion. The acquisition marks the culmination of weeks of speculation over whether Tiffany would accept a bid from LVMH, which first made an offer for $14.5 billion earlier this month. The deal is a strategic move by LVMH to better compete against its peers Kering and Richemont in the luxury jewelry category, embedding Tiffany within the company's already robust 75-company umbrella. 

Tiffany & Co. has a storied history, beginning as a New York-based stationery and fine goods store in 1837. US presidents have sought out the jeweler over the years, starting with Abraham Lincoln and first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. In 1886 Tiffany & Co. introduced the concept of the diamond engagement ring as we know it today. 

Over time, Tiffany & Co. became synonymous with the lavish lifestyles of the Gilded Age. It later evolved to become an integral part of pop culture, with movies like "Breakfast at Tiffany's," as well as a beloved red carpet accessory among Hollywood's elite. Today it has more than 200 stores across the globe and a voracious fan base. 

We took a closer look at how Tiffany & Co. became the luxury powerhouse it is today. 

SEE ALSO: LVMH confirms deal to buy Tiffany for $16.2 billion in its largest acquisition ever

Tiffany & Co. was founded in 1837 by 25-year-old Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young. Tiffany used a $1,000 advance from his father to open the store.

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

Tiffany & Co. specialized in silver and was notable for using the 92% pure British standard method of producing its ornate products.

Here's an early Tiffany & Co. newspaper ad.

Tiffany began its rise to prominence after becoming the first American company to win the grand prize for silver craftsmanship at the 1867 Paris World's Fair.

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

Tiffany continued to garner attention when it acquired the world's largest yellow diamond in 1878.

Dubbed the Tiffany diamond, the gem was found in a Kimberley diamond mine in South Africa and was cut from 287.42 carats to 128.54 carats with 82 facets by gemologist Dr. George Frederick Kunz.

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

In 1845, Tiffany began publishing the Blue Book, a catalog of the company's most ornate gems and silver.

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

The Blue Book was the first catalog to be distributed across the country and is the origin of Tiffany's signature blue branding.

In 1886, Tiffany introduced the concept of the modern diamond engagement ring.

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

Another Vogue model shows off the Tiffany engagement ring.

By the early 1900s, Tiffany was already beloved among politicians and celebrities alike.

Franklin Roosevelt purchased a Tiffany engagement ring for Eleanor Roosevelt in 1904. It was quickly becoming a go-to spot for notable high-society families including the Vanderbilts, Astors, and Whitneys. 

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

Over the next few decades, Tiffany established itself as the "world's diamond authority," thanks to its introducing shoppers to precious gems from around the world.

The Fifth Avenue store became a go-to destination in Manhattan.

Tiffany soon became synonymous with the nation's most fashionable women, including famed magazine columnist and editor Diana Vreeland.

Before long, you couldn't even crack open a magazine without seeing models draped in Tiffany jewelry. Tiffany was everywhere, from the pages of Glamour magazine ...

... to issues of Mademoiselle.

Tiffany was also a favorite of First Lady Jackie Kennedy, seen here wearing a Tiffany brooch gifted to her by President John F. Kennedy following the birth of their son.

The piece was designed by Jean Schlumberger, and today it exists in the Kennedy Library in Boston.

Source: InStyle

Tiffany & Co. further exploded into popular culture with the release of the classic film "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961.

Based on the book by Truman Capote and starring Hollywood icon Audrey Hepburn, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a romantic comedy chronicling the life of Manhattan socialite Holly Golightly. 

To commemorate the start of filming, Henry B. Platt — the great-grandson of founder Charles Lewis Tiffany — affixed a Tiffany necklace on Audrey Hepburn.

True to its title, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" features several scenes both inside and outside of the store.

Tiffany & Co. was also featured in the 1967 thriller "Rosemary's Baby," starring Mia Farrow. In the scene, Farrow's character visits Tiffany & Co. to order birth announcement cards.

In 1967, Tiffany was asked to design the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the NFL Super Bowl. It has created the trophy every year since.

The next two decades ushered in a wave of fresh designers who each brought their unique flare to jewelry design, including Jean Schlumberger.

Elsa Peretti joined in the 1970s, bringing "design with an elegant simplicity based on natural forms."

Source: Tiffany & Co. 

Paloma Picasso, the youngest daughter of Pablo Picasso, came to Tiffany in the 1980s and was best known for bold, flashy pieces.

In the 1980s, Tiffany began to expand into new product areas, including fragrances.

During the 1990s and leading into the new millennium, Tiffany continued to hold a prominent role in popular culture and American history.

In 1999, Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated the release of a new commemorative silver dollar coin designed by Tiffany & Co. 

In the 2000s, Tiffany continued to be a staple among fashion's elite, including Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

It also retained its prominence in Hollywood.

In 2012, Tiffany & Co. celebrated its 175th anniversary.

Today, Tiffany & Co. remains beloved by Americans, including Hollywood starlets who are constantly seen wearing Tiffany designs on the red carpet.

In the modern era, Tiffany has also experimented with new forms of retail, including adding cafes to select stores.

Additionally, Tiffany has brought on fresh Hollywood faces to rep the brand, including Elle Fanning.

It's hard to say what the future holds for Tiffany & Co. under LVMH, but we expect at least another century of greatness for the iconic jeweler.

• The buzzy media darling TheSkimm has been looking for an investor or buyer to accelerate its growth, people familiar with the talks told Business Insider.
• TheSkimm has raised $28.4 million and is on track to generate $30 million in revenue this year, profitably, but its user growth has slowed, the sources said.
• The company wants to diversify its revenue with paid subscription apps, but media investment has dried up, and it's hard to get people to use new apps and pay for them.
• A company spokesperson denied TheSkimm was "looking for a buyer" but wouldn't elaborate.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

The buzzy media darling TheSkimm has been looking for an investor or buyer as media companies consolidate around it, people familiar with the talks told Business Insider.

Founded in 2012 by two former NBC coworkers, Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, TheSkimm delivers a speed-read newsletter for millennial women on the news of the day. It bills itself as a membership company, which is no surprise given the market has soured on ad-driven digital media, and has boasted that it has celebrity fans like Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon.

TheSkimm is profitable and projects $30 million in revenue this year, most of it in the form of advertising, but its subscriber growth has slowed, two people with direct knowledge said.

The company has met with the investment bank LionTree, a source said. One of TheSkimm's board members, Betsy Morgan, is also an executive in residence at LionTree, according to LinkedIn. And the company has prepared a presentation touting its revenue and growth plans, according to people familiar with the matter.

A company spokesperson denied TheSkimm was "looking for a buyer" but wouldn't comment further.

Some other venture-capital-backed digital-media companies have recently consolidated after hitting a growth wall. Refinery29 sold to Vice Media, and PopSugar sold to Group Nine Media.

TheSkimm has raised $28.4 million from investors including 21st Century Fox and RRE Ventures — less than some of its peers but more than some other newsletter companies, like The Hustle ($1.3 million, according to Crunchbase) and the bootstrapped Morning Brew.

TheSkimm most recently raised $12 million in 2018 from Google Ventures and, according to investors who spoke with Vox, was looking for a $100 million valuation at the time. It employs about 100 people.

TheSkimm has branched out with a podcast, a video series, a book, and e-commerce through links in the newsletter. In 2016, it launched a $2.99 a month paid app, Skimm Ahead, that adds relevant events to users' calendars.

TheSkimm wants to grow the subscription side of its business

But its daily newsletter subscriber growth, at around 7 million, has slowed — it's about even from a year ago— and the company needs more money to grow its user base and launch more paid apps as it tries to establish a bigger subscription business, people with knowledge of its plans said.

The company's growth troubles could be a function of the business it's in. Newsletter companies tend to hit a wall when they try to branch out to other products, people with expertise in that business model told Business Insider.

The newsletters that are most popular (as indicated by a high open rate) tend to be niche. As they get bigger, the open rate typically goes down, making them less attractive to advertisers. That's also the challenge facing the 4-year-old Morning Brew, a similarly styled newsletter for young professionals, which itself is looking to branch out beyond advertising.

TheSkimm is also squarely directed at young women, which limits its ability to grow its audience.

TheSkimm wants to build paid subscription apps. Finance may be one area of interest; TheSkimm has been running a survey asking users questions like how they make financial decisions, how they get personal financial advice, and which topics and products they'd be interested in. But it's hard to get people to use, much less pay for, multiple apps.

Another general challenge for media companies raising money these days is that investors have been reluctant to put more money into digital media for which they don't see a path to diversified revenue streams.

SEE ALSO: How Outbrain established 'around the web' content recommendations, only to lose its lead to Taboola and end up getting eaten by its rival

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Behind the scenes with Shepard Smith — the Fox News star who just announced his resignation from the network

• Michael Rapaport is best known for his acting and directing career, but he's been a podcast host for longer than most other celebrities.
• His podcast, "I Am Rapaport: Stereo Podcast," is admittedly offensive and presents an exaggerated version of his personality, but Rapaport said he runs the podcast professionally.
• In a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider, he explained why he got into podcasting, his decision to take his show to Luminary, and why not everyone can make it as a podcast host.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Actor and director Michael Rapaport launched his podcast almost five years ago, taking a gamble on the medium relatively early. Looking back, he said he's glad he got in on the ground floor.

"I'm lucky that we started then because I feel like right now, for better or for worse, podcasts are like a-------: Everyone has one," Rapaport told Business Insider.

Rapaport stars in the Netflix show "Atypical" as the father of a teenager with autism, and is also known for appearances in other shows and films since the early 90s such as "Friends" and "Prison Break."

But his hosting persona on the "I Am Rapaport: Stereo Podcast" is far from fatherly. He talked with Business Insider about why he got into podcasting, why he recently moved his show to subscription-based podcast platform Luminary, and how he advises actors wanting to get into the medium.

The show is unscripted, and while Rapaport said he's not acting while hosting, he plays an exaggerated version of himself. The result is a self-described "offensive," no-holds-barred discussion of everything from sports to movies to politics.

"Because the podcast is just me, unless I have guests, it's like a verbal diary," Rapaport said. "It's an exercise of how much s--- talking I can do in one serving."

The low production cost got Rapaport interested in podcasting after he was featured on an episode of the "Monday Morning Podcast" hosted by Bill Burr. Rapaport's show has become a major part of his career.

Why 'I Am Rapaport' switched to Luminary

It took almost a year for "I Am Rapaport" to turn a profit from ad sales, Rapaport said. He, like many podcast hosts, was choosy about the ads he agreed to read on the show.

"You build up a relationship with your audience, and they can tell if you're bulls------," Rapaport said. "We did the podcast for four years for free at times."

In March he announced the show would move to Luminary, a decision Rapaport said he made with his producers because they liked the business model and the other shows in the Luminary network.

Luminary, which describes itself as Netflix for podcasts, pays podcast producers to make shows exclusively for the platform.

The startup sparked controversy when it launched because the way it linked out to non-Luminary podcasts made it impossible for creators to tell how many people were accessing their podcasts through Luminary. But Rapaport said he's benefited from the change.

"Because people are paying for it, it pushed me to be even better," Rapaport said. 

Rapaport shares tips for actors considering podcasting

In recent years more actors have turned to podcasts to express themselves and connect with fans, and Rapaport said he sees the appeal. 

Actors constantly have to jump through hoops and risk rejection, so the freedom of expression that podcasting allows is attractive. It takes dedication for a show to succeed, though, he said.

"Podcasting is not for everyone," Rapaport said. "It's not as easy as it looks, and you have to respect the format."

He advised new podcasters to make sure they have something unique to say before launching a show and to stick to a schedule once they start to ensure consistency and foster lasting relationships with listeners.

"The relationship that I imagine I have with the audience is very intimate to me," Rapaport said. "I talk about things I don't talk about anywhere else."

SEE ALSO: A top podcast host and producer for iHeartRadio and HowStuffWorks gives her advice for success in audio, including embracing your vocal quirks

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch the 20 details you may have missed in the new trailer for 'Birds of Prey'

Hello! Welcome to our weekly Advertising and Media Insider. If you're new to this newsletter, sign up for your own here.

Before you head out to gorge yourself on turkey, make sure to read Tanya Dua's insider reporting on Juul's implosion, where 650 people, or 16%, were laid off amid mounting regulations and federal investigations. Some key takeaways from former employees:

• Some thought the cuts reflected problems of unchecked explosive growth, lack of proper business processes, and mismanagement.
• Some said they lost faith in the company's leadership as they saw the executive ranks packed with people from tobacco and alcohol companies.

Juul just laid off 650 workers after federal investigations rocked the company. Workers who were affected describe how it was handled and what they saw leading up to it.

Funding for adtech companies may be drying up, leading to consolidation, but it's still notable when an established and heavily funded one goes under. Lauren Johnson's been following the story of one of adtech's first firms, IgnitionOne, that raised $85.2 million and just shut down, with backers losing their stakes. Key points:

• IgnitionOne was billed as a "one-stop shop" to help marketers with their digital-ad spending. It pitched advertisers on its expertise of Google, Facebook, and programmatic advertising early on.
• But agencies have been cutting the number of adtech companies they use, putting pressure on adtech companies to differentiate what are similar-looking offerings.

IgnitionOne is shutting down. Read the letter its CEO sent to shareholders about what happened to one of adtech's oldest companies.

Finally, I was curious about what's happening with theSkimm, which has raised more than $28 million on its ability to connect with millennial women with its breezy, speed-read daily news digest.

TheSkimm is mostly ad-driven, but given how hard it is for independent media companies to compete for ad dollars, the path forward for companies like it is to pivot hard to subscriptions and other revenue streams or get sold. That seems to be where theSkimm finds itself now.

Industry insiders say buzzy millennial media company TheSkimm has been looking for an investor or buyer as user growth slows

Here are other great stories from media, marketing, and advertising. (You can read most of the articles here by subscribing to BI Prime; use promo code AD2PRIME2018 for a free month.) And send me tips at lmoses@businessinsider.com.

Amazon is shutting down a controversial advertising program that lets brands slip samples into delivery boxes

Spotify lays off about 30 in ad sales after missing internal revenue goals

Mobile ad company Kargo is trying to prepare for privacy laws with its first chief revenue officer and a new ad format

Direct-to-consumer brands' average sales revenue is expected to soar 85% by 2020, spelling more doom for legacy brands struggling to catch up

An ad-industry-salary spreadsheet is going viral, and its entries range from an assistant account exec making $40,000 to a chief strategy officer earning $500,000

The biggest direct-to-consumer spender, SmileDirectClub, explains why it keeps pouring money into its own ad agency

How advertisers can overcome the obstacles to ads on smart speakers and capitalize on their rise

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Taylor Swift is the world's highest-paid celebrity. Here's how she makes and spends her $360 million.

• Facebook users are trying to trick the social network into showing their posts to more people by adding keywords about major life events to them.
• People believe that Facebook prioritizes posts about weddings, babies, new jobs, and the like, so they're falsely claiming to be hitting these milestones to promote unrelated posts.
• It's not totally clear if the social network does actually do this — but over the last few years, the belief has spread widely among its users.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Wily Facebook users in search of more publicity for their posts are trying to game the social network by adding fake engagement and pregnancy announcements into their posts.

Facebook doesn't always show a user's posts to everyone they're friends with; instead, the company's opaque algorithm selects a subset of people to show it to, meaning posts it deems uninteresting can get lost in the digital ether. In an attempt to get around this, in recent years some Facebook users have taken to adding buzzwords and phrases like "getting married" or "having a baby" in to their posts.

The assumption is that Facebook's algorithm views posts about these major life events as more important — and prioritizes them at the top of people's news feeds.

This nominal Facebook hack has been floating around for years. Back in 2014, it was pioneered by a then-director at Fusion, who stuck a bunch of keywords like "congratulations" and "new job" in a post — resulting in it appearing at the top of friends' Facebook news feeds for days. 

But since then, it has quietly trickled down to the wider population — and now savvy Facebookers will frequently stick these messages in their posts in an attempt to reach more people.

For example, Twitter user Eben Marks remarked this week that they had used it to juice their reach when trying to get more people to register to vote in the UK before the deadline:

And a friend of mine who's a journalist also tried to cash in on the method earlier this year to request help on a story from their friends:

Users of the method seem convinced of its efficacy — but it's not totally clear if it still works. 

It could be that posts that deliberately make use of the buzzwords garner more engagement because the user's friends find the attempt to trick the system novel and amusing, or that they are typically affixed to more engaging posts anyway. Similarly, posts about weddings, babies, new jobs and the like seem highly likely to get above-average levels of engagement on Facebook, regardless of whether or not the algorithm is artificially boosting them. (The algorithm is known to boost posts that are driving engagement, regardless of keywords, meaning there's a virtuous cycle effect for these posts.)

A Facebook spokesperson did not respond to a request for clarification on whether the "hack" works — but for now, if you see Facebook posts with random buzzwords in, this is why.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.)

Read more:

• Instagram's lax privacy practices let a trusted partner track millions of users' physical locations, secretly save their stories, and flout its rules
• Mark Zuckerberg's personal security chief accused of sexual harassment and making racist remarks about Priscilla Chan by 2 former staffers
• Facebook says it 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5 million people's email contacts without their consent
• Years of Mark Zuckerberg's old Facebook posts have vanished. The company says it 'mistakenly deleted' them.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: People are still debating the pink or grey sneaker, 2 years after it went viral. Here's the real color explained.

The future, according to Mark Zuckerberg, is private.

Reeling from two years of bruising scandals, Facebook has begun a major initiative to overhaul the social network so that it's more attuned to the privacy and security implications of a service used by more than 2 billion people. 

As part of this so-called pivot to privacy, Zuckerberg described the future Facebook as being divided between a public "town square"— essentially the familiar public posts on the Facebook Newsfeed today — and a private "living room."

"As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms,"Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post in March. "Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks."

Facebook's private living room will encompass existing products like WhatsApp, as well as yet-to-be created services and features. Facebook is already hard at work knitting together its various messaging apps — WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and Messenger — making them end-to-end encrypted and giving users more control over their data. And new products being developed, including the controversial libra digital currency, will be built on the foundation of this new privacy framework. 

It's a major undertaking — but who's behind it? Who are the crucial figures driving it to succeed? Business Insider has identified 16 of the key figures working on the company's "pivot to privacy," from veteran lawyers to key lieutenants of the 34-year-old billionaire CEO, expert technologists, and Facebook critics turned insiders. 

In no particular order, here they all are:

SEE ALSO: Instagram's lax privacy practices let a trusted partner track millions of users' physical locations, secretly save their stories, and flout its rules

DON'T MISS: Mark Zuckerberg's personal security chief accused of sexual harassment and making racist remarks about Priscilla Chan by 2 former staffers

UP NEXT: Facebook says it 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5 million people's email contacts without their consent

Erin Egan, a Facebook veteran working as one of its two chief privacy officers

Egan is an eight-year Facebook veteran serving in one of the social networking giant's most important roles: chief privacy officer for policy.

She oversees the policies and rules that try to protect Facebook's more than 2 billion global users. Before Facebook, she spent 15 years at the law firm Covington & Burling, becoming partner and cochair of its global privacy and data-security practice group.

Adam Mosseri, shepherding Facebook's buzziest app into the privacy-first future

Mosseri is a key lieutenant of Mark Zuckerberg and entrusted with Facebook's hottest property: Instagram.

The creator of the Newsfeed is responsible for overseeing the photo-sharing app as it gears up to implement end-to-end encryption on all its messages, the biggest public-facing consequence of Facebook's "pivot to privacy."

The 36-year-old exec has been at Facebook since 2008 and studied at New York University.

Pedro Canahuati, a technical exec looking at security and privacy

As vice president of security and privacy engineering, Canahuati is helping safeguard Facebook users' data — from protecting data centers from hackers to dealing with government demands for users' data.

He's also the guy who steps in when there's a crisis: According to a previous report from The Information, he "leads the company's technical response to security and data-privacy incidents."

He's been an engineering manager in varying capacities at Facebook since the middle of 2009 and studied computer science at the University of Maryland in the '90s.

Ashlie Beringer, privacy-focused legal guru

Managing privacy matters on the legal side is Beringer, who heads up the Facebook's regulatory, product, and privacy legal team.

According to her LinkedIn profile, she is "responsible for defense and engagement in all regulatory matters involving the Facebook family of companies worldwide. Oversee team providing full spectrum legal guidance to product, ads and partnership teams in all phases of product and platform development."

She joined Facebook in 2013 and was a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher before that.

Fidji Simo, driving Facebook's new focus on Groups and Stories

Facebook's "pivot to privacy" isn't just about sticking encryption on everything — the company is also encouraging ways for users to interact in more intimate, specialized ways.

Two key strands in this are Groups, letting friends and strangers congregate around common interest; and Stories, ephemeral photo and video messages that disappear after 24 hours. 

As head of Facebook's core app, Simo is responsible for both of these products — as well as managing the 15-year-old service more broadly and ensuring it doesn't wane in relevancy during the company's next chapter.

The former eBay employee joined Facebook in 2011 and was previously vice president of video, games and monetization.

Kevin Bankston, a Facebook critic turned employee

Bankston is a Facebook critic turned advocate. He previously worked as the director of New America's Open Technology Institute, as well as an attorney at the digital-rights think tank the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

These days, he's a privacy policy director at Facebook, where he focuses on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.

When he joined Facebook in April, he wrote a blog post explaining his decision:

I am not going to Facebook despite the fact that I have been a critic. I am going because I have been. Because I believe in the promise of what the company is building … I can't and won't make excuses for the privacy mistakes that Facebook has made (and that I have criticized) over the past ten years. What I can do is help ensure that they make the right decisions now, not just for the products that exist today, but for all the products that are coming in the future.

Stephen Deadman, Facebook's first-ever data-protection officer

Deadman is Facebook's first-ever data-protection officer.

Appointed in May 2018, the Ireland-based exec works to ensure Facebook complies with General Data Protection Regulation in Europe. Before taking the role, he said in an interview to The Privacy Advisor that it would involve "monitoring processes and systems, putting in place new processes and documentation for compliance, and working with cross-functional teams to ensure we have the best arrangements to deliver compliance in practice."

Before joining Facebook in 2015, he worked for the telecom firm Vodafone as group-privacy officer.

Michel Protti, Facebook's newly appointed second chief privacy officer

In the aftermath of Facebook's $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over privacy issues, the firm was seeking to appoint a chief privacy officer to oversee its products — so it turned to Protti, a longtime marketing executive at the company.

Formally Facebook's vice president of partnerships product marketing, Protti now serves as the newly appointed chief privacy officer for product, directly reporting to Zuckerberg.

Before joining Facebook in 2013, he worked at Guggenheim Media, Yahoo, and McKinsey.

Guy Rosen, Facebook's data cop keeping the platform safe for users

Rosen isn't closely involved in the nuts and bolts of encryption or privacy engineering like some of Facebook's privacy-focused leaders — but he plays a key role in ensuring the platform remains safe and secure for its users.

He's the vice president of integrity at Facebook, where he manages teams working to battle issues like fake accounts, propaganda campaigns, account security, and other malign influences on the social network.

At Facebook since 2013, he has also previously worked on the growth team, as well as on the company's connectivity efforts.

Nate Cardozo, looking after privacy on Facebook's flagship encrypted app, WhatsApp

Cardozo is another critic of Facebook that the social network managed to persuade to come on board to help clean it up. He's now working as the privacy-policy manager for WhatsApp, which in 2016 made history by adding end-to-end encryption to all its messages, in one of the largest consumer rollouts of encryption ever.

Before joining earlier this year, he was the senior information-security counsel for EFF, the nonprofit tech advocacy group.

Will Cathcart, leading WhatsApp, the company's flagship encrypted app

Instagram is cautiously wading into the sometimes controversial waters of encryption — but WhatsApp has been there for years.

The messaging app has had end-to-end encryption since 2016, and these days, it is Cathcart who leads it. Another long-running exec who has been at the company for almost a decade, Cathcart took the mantle at WhatsApp in March after having worked as the head of the core Facebook app.

As Facebook doubles down on its privacy initiatives, taking learnings from WhatsApp's successes and missteps will be critical.

David Marcus, leading Facebook's new digital-currency efforts

Libra is a wildly ambitious new bet for Facebook: an attempt to build an all-new digital currency.

Mired in controversy, it has yet to launch — but when it does, it will represent a dramatic new direction for Facebook's business, far removed from its traditional data-hungry advertising model.

The mastermind behind it, who is now responsible for ensuring libra (and Facebook's related crypto subsidiary, Calibra) doesn't stray from Zuckerberg's privacy focus is Marcus, a former PayPal exec who also led Messenger for several years.

So far, Facebook has stressed the project's commitment to privacy, saying that Calibra won't share user data with the Facebook mothership (except for limited cases, like law enforcement).

Delfina Eberly, a Facebook veteran overseeing privacy audit and oversight

Eberly is another veteran Facebooker that was reassigned after the FTC settlement. Previously a vice president of infrastructure tasked with keeping Facebook's systems ticking smoothly, she is now taking the lead on privacy programs' audit and oversight.

She joined the company in February 2010 after working as chief information officer of CriticalPath for five years.

Stan Chudnovsky, a steward of an app Facebook hopes to transform

Messenger is the third pillar in Facebook's plan to make its messaging apps end-to-end encrypted and interoperable. 

Making sure that goes off smoothly is Chudnovsky, a former PayPal exec who joined Facebook in 2014 and most recently worked as the head of product for Messenger before taking on its top job when Marcus dove headfirst into crypto.

Yvonne Cunnane, a crucial lawyer in a crucial market

The European Union's tough privacy regulation GDPR and its willingness to battle tech giants means that it's a critically sensitive market for Facebook.

Helping to navigate that landscape for the company is Cunnane, an Irish lawyer who works as the associate general counsel and head of data protection under Beringer, overseeing data protection issues in Europe.

Vladimir Fedorov, reviewing privacy across all of Facebook's product and engineering teams

Fedorov has been at Facebook for more than a decade, rising from a platform engineering in 2009 to vice president of engineering on ads.

After the FTC settlement, he was tasked with leading privacy review "across all our product and engineering teams,"Facebook's marketing chief, Carolyn Everson, wrote in a memo to ad-agency partners.

A Caltech alumnus, he also previously worked at Microsoft.

The yet-to-be-decided privacy committee on Facebook's board

As part of Facebook's $5 billion FTC settlement, the company has agreed to establish a Privacy Committee on its board of directors.

Its members have yet to be announced, but when it is formally created, they will have ultimate responsibility for overseeing Facebook's privacy efforts and ensuring that users' data is being kept safe and secure.

The FTC does not specify how many members the committee must include but states that each member must be an "independent" director. Facebook has only three independent directors on its board. They are: 

• Peggy Alford, the senior vice president of core markets at PayPal Holdings and the former chief financial officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. 
• Kenneth Chenault, the chairman of the venture-capital firm General Catalyst and the former CEO of American Express.
• Jeffrey Zients, the CEO of the Cranemere Group and the director of the National Economic Council during the Obama administration. 

Do you work at Facebook? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a nonwork phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.)

• Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, tweeted his farewell to Africa on Wednesday but announced he would return and move to the continent for at least three months in 2020.  
• The tech exec earlier said that he would be touring the continent in November, exploring Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. He was in Ethiopia this week. 
• Dorsey is famous for his world travels and eccentric lifestyle. He was in Myanmar in December and tweeted that he did a 10-day silent vipassana meditation to celebrate his birthday. 
• But this month's trip seemingly has more to do with business, as Dorsey's tweets document his meetings with entrepreneurs across Africa.
• Dorsey isn't the only CEO fascinated by the continent's potential. Former Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma was also in Ethiopia this week, where a government press release said Alibaba would work with it to establish a new trade platform. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and the mobile-payments company Square, suggested that he may move to Africa for at least three months next year. 

"Sad to be leaving the continent…for now," Dorsey tweeted on Wednesday. "Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!). Not sure where yet, but I'll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020."

The bearded 43-year-old tech exec was in Ethiopia this week as part of a monthlong tour across the continent that he tweeted in October he was making. He said he would be meeting with entrepreneurs in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. 

Dorsey is known for his world travels and sometimes eccentric practices. He said he was in Melbourne, Australia, in September, and in Myanmar in December, where he said he celebrated his birthday with a 10-day silent vipassana meditation. 

Dorsey appears to have continued his vipassana practice, tweeting a picture from his third 10-day vipassana meditation in South Africa last week. But the majority of his trip appears to have been spent meeting with the tech community across the country.

Dorsey's visit stands in stark contrast with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 2020 goal to host public discussions on the future of technology in society, which has drawn attention for its lack of diversity. 

Africa, much of which lacks the infrastructure of countries in the Western world, has traditionally been treated as an afterthought by many of the big tech companies.

Whether Dorsey's trip to the continent signals a change remains to be seen. But he's not the only tech bigwig traveling to Africa. Former Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma was also in Ethiopia this week, signing an agreement to establish a new trade platform. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 8 weird robots NASA wants to send to space

• David Marcus is the executive leading Facebook's wildly ambitious plan to build a new digital currency.
• Business Insider spoke to former colleagues of Marcus' to understand what drives the man at the heart of Facebook's most controversial project yet.
• Sources described the 46-year-old, French-born exec as intensely product-focused, ruthlessly focused, and unafraid to talk in visionary terms.
• The serial entrepreneur views the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs as a hero.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

After PayPal acquired David Marcus' startup in 2011, a three-letter word — "GSD"— started appearing on signs in company conference rooms.

It was an acronym that represented a mission statement of the ambitious payments executive: "Get shit done."

Nearly a decade later, Marcus is now at the helm of a wildly ambitious project from Facebook to build a new digital currency called Libra— battling critics and fending off deeply skeptical regulators as he attempts to kickstart a project with potentially global implications.

Business Insider spoke to former coworkers of Marcus, to learn more about the man behind Facebook's most audacious project in years, what he's like as a leader, and how his personal attributes might shape the outcome of Libra.

They described a man who is intensely product-focused, unafraid to talk in visionary terms, and ruthlessly focused on trying to "get shit done."

Serial entrepreneur-turned-in-house exec

Marcus, 46, is a serial entrepreneur. 

Back in 1996, after dropping out of college he founded retail communications provider GTN Telecom, which he ran for four years. It was acquired by World Access in 2000, and he immediately kicked off his next venture — Echovox, which built an early form of mobile payments using SMS billing.

It too, was ultimately acquired, and in 2008 he launched his third act: Zong. 

Zong also helped build mobile payments, and — there's starting to be a pattern here — it ended up getting acquired, this time by PayPal, three and a half years after launch.

At PayPal, though, he hung around for a few years, rising from a mobile executive to eventually become president of the multi-billion-dollar payments firm. 

In 2014, though, Facebook came knocking. He joined as vice president of messaging products, responsible for building out Messenger from a dime-a-dozen messaging app into a fully fledged app, a position he held for almost four years before diving headfirst into blockchain as the head of Facebook's experimental new unit.

Today, as head of Calibra, he effectively runs a company-within-a-company, building a product from the ground-up that has a radically different focus to some of Facebook's traditional areas of expertise.

A product-first entrepreneur styled after Steve Jobs

David Marcus has a professional hero that points to his aspirations for blockchain technology: Steve Jobs.

"David was a big Steve Jobs fan, he seemed to want to emulate people like Jobs in terms of having ubiquitous product accolade and conformity," said Colin Walsh, who worked alongside Marcus as a strategic account executive at Zong and later PayPal.

The executive is obsessive about how products look and work, and that focus could bode well for the cryptocurrency space, which has struggled to achieve any meaningful consumer usage, despite all the buzz. "It's extremely hard to use. Look at most of the apps based on crypto today ... designed for engineers," said Upwork CEO Stephane Kasriel, who worked with Marcus at Zong and PayPal and still counts him as a friend.

"I think there's one thing David does extremely well ... extremely user experience-centric" design.

Outside of work, the France-born, Switzerland-raised entrepreneur is passionate about motorbikes and skiing.

He has successively landed at bigger and bigger platforms

Marcus has been involved with cryptocurrencies for at least the best part of a decade. He was one of a small group of Silicon Valley tech and fintech figures — early Facebook employee turned investor Chamath Palihapitiya is also among them — who dabbled in bitcoin fairly early. He first sent Kasriel, the Upwork CEO, a bitcoin about eight years ago, he remembered.

Since then, his involvement has grown more serious, and in December of 2017, he joined the board of high-profile blockchain firm Coinbase, in a nod to his future calling. (He stepped down eight months later, citing his work for the then-nascent Facebook blockchain group).

His interest in blockchain is only fitting, given what former colleagues described as a focus on ambitious projects and bold dreams.

"David wants to achieve big, life-changing developments in technology," Walsh said. "As long as I knew him, that is his motivation in business."

"He cares deeply about the details, he was on the phone with engineers" to talk about individual product changes, Kasriel said — but he's "also a visionary, he has big dreams ... [and] talks about them in a very compelling" manner.

Throughout Marcus career trajectory, he has successively landed at bigger and bigger platforms to try and achieve his goals, learning how to manage different team sizes and "radically different environments" along the way.

Much of the Calibra team are veterans from Zong and PayPal, Kasriel points out: "He's managed to convince people from amazing companies" to sign up for his vision.

"He does not settle for whatever he's inherited"

This lofty demeanor does not obscure another side to Marcus: A relentless focus on execution.

PayPal, by the time of the Zong acquisition, "had become a slow moving company," Kasriel said. Marcus came in and shook things up immediately — driving its shift to mobile, and ultimately laying the groundwork for a company with a market cap today of $126 billion.

The three-letter "mantra" displayed on signs served as a constant reminder of Marcus' approach. 

"He does not settle for whatever he's inherited," said Kasriel.

Walsh said: "David is a serious business person but does have a lighter side, a sense of humor and empathy to a degree, but is ultimately a very focused and determined individual who will not let obstacles impede the outcomes he wishes to achieve."

So after five years at Facebook, might David Marcus one day want to be CEO again, and have another chance to truly run the show?

"I think you'd have to ask him," Kasriel demurs. "But given what he's trying to do, you need to do it in a place that has scale ... a company that already has billions of online users."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: People are still debating the pink or grey sneaker, 2 years after it went viral. Here's the real color explained.

• Audio content is becoming increasingly popular, and advertisers are looking to reach audiences on listening-only media platforms.
• But Amazon and Google restrict ads on their smart speakers lest customers find unprompted sponsored content intrusive.
• Amazon once was in talks to open Alexa up to ad opportunities, CNBC reported, but the company denied that option was on the table. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Google, Facebook and other internet companies reap tens of billions of dollars in revenue every year by putting ads on the screens of computers and smartphones. 

But what happens in a world without screens?

As consumers turn to voice-based devices like smart speakers to get the morning news, look up the score of last night's ball game and send messages, visual ads seem to be in a prime position to get squeezed out. That means the online giants who rely on advertising sales, like Google, Facebook and Amazon, as well as the marketers who use the internet to reach new customers, need to figure out how to adapt to the voice age. 

So far, Google, Amazon and Facebook — which are also the same companies making smart speakers — are taking a go-slow approach to voice advertising.

Amazon, which makes the Echo line of smart speakers, and Google, which makes the Home smart speakers, don't currently run paid advertisements on their smart speakers. 

While Amazon does not accept ads on Alexa (the name of the virtual assistant that powers Amazon's Echo devices), advertising is allowed on Alexa features where users are already accustomed to hearing ads, such as on music streaming services or news channels, according to an Amazon spokesperson.

Facebook's Portal — which also has Amazon's Alexa built in — doesn't run ads, but users might hear them from third-party apps similarly to the way they would on an Amazon speaker. Data that Facebook collects from users of its Portal devices (think: the recipes you look up) can also be used to improve targeting on other Facebook-owned properties, Vox publication Recode reported.

Fear of a user backlash

The caution towards opening smart speakers to ads more broadly is likely due to a fear of annoying users. In 2017, Google got backlash when its Google Assistant voice just mentioned the opening of the new "Beauty and the Beast" movie in its summary of the day. Even though Google insisted the movie mention was not actually a paid ad, it felt like an intrusion to some users.

Indeed, a 2018 Survata survey showed that only 17% of Amazon Echo and Echo Dot owners said they would not mind hearing ads, while 22% of Google Home users and 35% of Apple HomePod users said the same, Business Insider reported.

But attitudes may be changing. In June, Adobe found that 42% of smart speaker owners prefer voice ads to TV and online ads, up from 39% in February, according to Forbes. Additionally, 43% of respondents said they find voice ads less intrusive than TV, print, online, and social ads.

Consumers are just getting acclimated to smart speakers and remain wary of privacy and security issues regarding voice technology, said Kent Lewis, the founder and president of Anvil Media, a marketing agency that incorporates voice search optimization strategy into its capabilities.

Lewis predicted that over the next year or two users might feel increasingly more comfortable hearing brand and product recommendations from their smart speakers.

"As the products roll out, there will be greater trust with adoption," Lewis said. "Early research shows consumers are okay with ads as long as they're relevant and don't feel intrusive."

New kinds of audio ads for a new breed of devices

For now, most of the ads you'll hear on smart speakers are tied to specific apps that stream audio on the speakers. For instance:

• Pandora sells ads that play only in streams on Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers, The Wall Street Journal reported. 
• Amazon and Google have launched free, ad-supported music streaming services exclusively for their smart speakers, according to Business Insider Intelligence.

These music-streaming ads are not very different than old-fashioned radio ads. But experts say for advertising to really take off on smart speakers, innovative new ad formats and concepts need to be created. 

One method of paid smart speaker advertising could involve companies paying to have Alexa read their search results first when someone asks her to look something up, similar to the way paid Google searches work, according to Business Insider Intelligence.

Companies could also pay for Alexa to suggest their brands based on past purchases and other shopping data. 

Smart speakers are becoming part of the decision making process when people shop, said Israel Mirsky, the executive director of global technology and emerging platforms at the agency OMD Worldwide, which recently published a study about smart speaker marketing. 

"This is the dawn of a new mode of consumer behavior," Mirsky said. "People are creating new behaviors for themselves and new habits. Brands are recognizing the importance of that."

Brand awareness campaigns are most common in audio advertising in its early stages, according to Lewis, although direct response ads can eventually be effective as well.

"They will really hit a peak in two to four years out," Lewis said. "Until then, it will be primarily passive ads driving awareness and intent."

Of course, screens aren't going to completely disappear anytime soon. So advertisers and publishers will continue to invest most of their time and money on traditional, visual internet ads. But as smart speakers turn up in more places, you can expect advertisers to target your ears as well as your eyes.

SEE ALSO: Apple HomePod owners are more receptive to ads on their smart speakers than Alexa and Google users

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NOW WATCH: Behind the scenes with Shepard Smith — the Fox News star who just announced his resignation from the network

• Thanksgiving Day's online sales are set to reach $4.4 billion, up 20.2% year-over-year, according to Adobe Analytics. 
• Nearly half of online sales as of 5 p.m. ET on Thursday were placed via smartphone. 
• According to Adobe, Facebook and Instagram outages did not negatively impact online sales. 
• Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

People are spending more than ever on Thanksgiving Day. And, it is due in part to people shopping on their phones during Thanksgiving gatherings. 

This Thanksgiving Day is set to be the first time ever that online sales surpass $4 billion in the US, with Adobe Analytics expecting sales to reach $4.4 billion by the end of the day, representing 20.2% year-over-year growth. As of 5 p.m. ET, online sales in the US had already hit $2.1 billion. 

Nearly half of these sales were placed via smartphone, with mobile making up 46.4% of all online sales as of 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, compared to 33.5% last year. In 2017, smartphone sales made up just 29.1% of Thanksgiving Day online sales. 

"[I]t's clear that shoppers are devoting more time to shopping on Thanksgiving than ever," Vivek Pandya, Adobe's lead digital analyst, said in a statement. "Expect to see a surge in retail sales in the afternoon and into the evening, as shoppers step away from their dinner tables and divert more attention to shopping for the best deals." 

According to Adobe, Facebook and Instagram outages did not negatively impact online sales. 

Many retailers now kick off Black Friday sales in stores and online before Friday even begins. According to an Adobe survey, one in 4 consumers plan to visit a physical store on Thanksgiving Day.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are also set to increase significantly this year. Adobe Analytics predicts Black Friday online sales will grow 20.5% year-over-year, to $7.5 billion, and Cyber Monday sales will grow 19.1% year-over-year, reaching $9.4 billion. 

• Read more about Black Friday:
• Here's when stores will open their doors for Black Friday sales
• 11 red flags Black Friday shoppers should watch out for
• The best Black Friday store sales of 2019 — from big-box retailers like Best Buy and Target to startups like Casper and Brooklinen
• Black Friday is dying, and the rise of Cyber Monday may be to blame

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 9 items to avoid buying at Costco

Happy Friday! 

This is Amanda Perelli, and welcome to Influencer Dashboard, a weekly rundown of what's new in the business of influencers. 

How important can "going viral" be in boosting the success of a YouTube creator?

For Alyssa Kulani (676,000 YouTube subscribers), everything changed after YouTube's algorithm picked up and recommended a prank video she posted in late 2018. She received a check from YouTube in January for nearly $30,000. Of that amount, $23,811 was from the viral prank video, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.

Kulani told me that until then, YouTube had always been a hobby and she worked a day job in retail because she wasn't earning enough from the platform. That check allowed her the freedom to focus on YouTube full time, and helped boost her channel at a rapid pace. It grew from 100,000 subscribers at the end of October 2018 to 400,000 subscribers by the end of January, she said. (Read her full story here.)

Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, known as Doctor Mike online, also saw his influencer career take off after going viral. In Varshavski's case, it was for being attractive on Instagram. Since then, he has focused on YouTube and tried to build a business that stretches beyond the superficial. I spent an afternoon with him in the studio.

You can read most of the articles here by subscribing to BI Prime. If this is your first time reading Influencer Dashboard, subscribe here.

Seeking nominations for the top YouTube and Instagram influencer-led direct-to-consumer brands

Before we get into this week's rundown, I need your help! Which brands founded by creators are the most valuable and impactful? 

Business Insider is putting together a power list of the leading direct-to-consumer brands founded by influencers and creators. The list will be determined by Business Insider based on our reporting and the nominations that we receive, and take into consideration factors like sales, reach, and impact on the industry.

Please submit your ideas through this form by December 1.

Check out our previous power lists, highlighting the top 14 talent managers and top 18 talent agents in the YouTube influencer space, for a sense of how this list will look.

2 YouTube creators told us how much money they earned from videos with 4 million views

How much money a creator earns from a YouTube video varies depending on a number of factors, from where the viewers are to which advertisers the video attracts.

I spoke to two YouTube creators, Shelby Church and Alyssa Kulani, about how much each of them earned from videos with 4 million views.

Previously, I spoke to Church and other top creators on their strategies for earning the most money possible through ads, and put together a five-step guide. (Check out that guide here.)

Read the full post on how much money creators on YouTube can earn off a single video with 4 million views. 

Doctor Mike went viral on Instagram for being attractive. Now he's focused on building his YouTube business and moving beyond the superficial.

I spent the afternoon Varshavski, a board-certified primary-care physician and popular YouTube influencer with 4 million subscribers.

Varshavski's Instagram page went viral in 2015 after he was featured in a BuzzFeed article, and then again in People magazine's 2015 "Sexiest Man Alive" issue.

He told me that today he splits his time between filming videos for YouTube and working as a doctor. 

Read the full post on how Varshavski has built a successful business on YouTube.

And check out a day in his studio, here. 

Send tips or feedback to me at aperelli@businessinsider.com.

Here's what else we're reading: 

• YouTube star who earns $1.6 million a year shares how he got his start: Kathleen Elkins, from CNBC, spoke with popular YouTube creator Graham Stephan on his yearly earnings from his two YouTube channels. 

• The life and rise of Emma Chamberlain, the 18-year-old YouTuber who has become one of Gen Z's most beloved celebrities: Paige Leskin, from Business Insider, documented everything you need to know about the internet star Emma Chamberlain, from where she grew up to her life today as a popular YouTube influencer and the internet's favorite teen. 

• UTA Signs Viral TikTok Star Brittany 'Kombucha Girl' Tomlinson (Exclusive): Geoff Weiss, from Tubefilter, has the details on one of Hollywood's top talent agencies signing a popular TikTok star who went viral earlier this year for a funny video of her trying kombucha for the first time. 

• James Charles: Sisterhood Is Stronger Than Subscribers: Jeena Sharma, from Paper Magazine, interviewed one of YouTube's top beauty influencers, James Charles, on cancel culture and his comeback after a recent controversy.

To get more stories like these in your inbox every Thursday, sign up for Influencer Dashboard.

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NOW WATCH: Behind the scenes with Shepard Smith — the Fox News star who just announced his resignation from the network

• As the podcast industry heats up, advertisers look increasingly toward audio to promote brands and sell products.
• Avid podcast listeners are sought after because they engage with ads and take them into consideration when purchasing, according to a study conducted by Edison Research and podcast network PodcastOne.
• Ads read by podcasts hosts are most successful in connecting brands with listeners, several industry executives said, but some in the space worry about the consequences of increased ad loads.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Podcast power users hear tons of ads, but they aren't overwhelmed yet, according to a study from Edison Research and the PodcastOne network.

The research found 70% of power users — those who listen for five or more hours a week — considered buying a new product or service after hearing about it on a podcast. 44% said they had a more positive opinion of a company if it was mentioned in a podcast they liked.

Analytics from podcast host companies like Apple also suggest ad engagement is strong, podcast executives told Business Insider. The average ad skip rate for a podcast is about 10% to 12%, according to iHeartPodcast Network President Conal Byrne.

Listeners trust the hosts of their favorite shows and are interested in what they have to say, even if a host is promoting a brand or product. Many podcast advertisers opt to have hosts read their ads for this reason. But traditional host-read ads can also limit the ability to target specific users, or monetize a back catalog of episodes — issues that some companies are trying to tackle with new tech as the podcasting industry grows.

Host-read ads work best, industry insiders say

The practice of hosts personally reading ads on their shows has becoming increasingly common.

Norman Pattiz, the founder and CEO of PodcastOne and a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame, estimated that over of 70% of the ads on shows in his network are host-read.

Other podcast companies have adopted host-read-only advertising models. The Ramble podcast network, a joint venture between podcast company Cadence13 and United Talent Agency that specializes in influencer podcasts, is one such company. All Ramble hosts read their own ads, which raises the company's cost per impression, said Cadence13 Chief Content Officer Chris Corcoran.

"These hosts are stars, and if the stars are voicing something for a big client, that's a real differentiator for advertising across any medium," Corcoran said.

Podcasting companies are looking to automation to make their ads more efficient

As host-read ads have surged, some podcast companies are looking to automate parts of the process.

Headgum, a comedy podcast network, recently launched an automated podcast ad platform called Gumball designed exclusively for selling host reads. The idea is to cut down the need for a dedicated sales team to sell those ad slots. A typical ad on the platform sells for about $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the size of the podcast and its audience, said Gumball co-founder Marty Michael.

Headgum has tested the platform internally over the past year and found it helped grow revenue by 55% year-over-year by connecting hosts with audio ad leaders like Casper, Hello Fresh, Squarespace, and Warby Parker, the company said.

While Gumball automates the ad sales process in particular, the podcast industry is also automating the placement of ads into episodes after they're sold.

Dynamic insertion of podcast ads has been gaining steam for the past few years and became widespread this year, Corcoran said. The process allows podcasters to change and swap the ads in their audio files with new ones as opposed to baking ads in permanently, opening doors for selling additional ads into back catalogs.

Some worry of ad oversaturation, but podcasts aren't there yet

As automated ad sales become more popular in podcasting, some worry this could lead to oversaturation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But podcasts listeners have not yet reached a point where they feel overwhelmed with ads, according to Edison and PodcastOne, at least compared to other mediums.

Less than 25% of super listeners said there are too many ads in podcasts, whereas 62% said the ad load in TV is too heavy.

But 49% of super listeners said there are more ads in podcasts this year than last, and Pattiz warned fellow industry leaders against adding more commercials as podcasting heads toward becoming a billion-dollar industry, which some predict will be the case in a year or two. 

"The minute you start doing that, then you start getting rid of one of the main things that makes a podcast popular beyond its content, which is that it doesn't have a lot of commercials," Pattiz said.

SEE ALSO: How advertisers can overcome the obstacles to ads on smart speakers and capitalize on their rise

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NOW WATCH: Behind the scenes with Shepard Smith — the Fox News star who just announced his resignation from the network

• Ownership of intellectual property, or the ideas that an ad agency pitches to win a brand's business, is an increasingly hot topic in the ad industry.
• Some brands have long demanded that agencies sign away rights to intellectual property they create.
• Recently, some agencies have begun to push back against this demand.
• General Mills got a lot of blowback when it required agencies to hand over IP ownership.
• And Crispin Porter Bogusky refuses to sign away IP rights — and is getting brands to change their approach 50% to 60% of the time, COO Ryan Skubic said.
• But the practice will likely continue as long as most agencies keep accepting brands' conditions.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The traditional ad industry is facing threats from all sides, and one of the latest is clients demanding to own the ideas that agencies pitch to win new business.

Agencies have long feared signing away the rights to their intellectual property without knowing if they're going to win the business and be paid for them or not.

But Nancy Hill, a consultant and former agency executive who led the trade group the 4A's for nearly a decade, said the issue is more emotionally charged than ever because agency profit margins are shrinking along with the length and value of an average client contract. 

As Ken Robinson, partner at search consultancy Ark Advisors, who is paid by brands to run agency reviews, put it, it may be worth it to an agency to hand over its IP for the chance to win an account worth $10 million in annual revenue, but not the four-month, $300,000 projects that have grown increasingly common.

Agencies are starting to push back harder

In another era, agency teams would mail themselves copies of their own pitch decks in sealed envelopes to prove the concepts they submitted were theirs, lest competitors steal those ideas, Hill said. 

But now they're more likely to push back against these practices or opt out of the pitches altogether.

Hill recently posted on LinkedIn about a "large CPG client" that insisted on owning all the ideas pitched during its agency review. She advised agencies to stay away, and the post inspired dozens of comments. 

In a similar case, General Mills received "quite a bit of flak" after Adweek reported that agencies participating in the food giant's review had to sign away IP ownership, CMO Ivan Pollard said at this year's Advertising Week in September. Agencies also had to agree not to get paid until four months after starting work on the account, despite having no indication of how long the contracts might last or how much revenue they might bring in.

Ryan Skubic, COO at the agency Crispin Porter Bogusky, whose clients include Domino's Pizza, said his agency refuses to participate in reviews with IP ownership clauses and gets clients to change those terms in their contracts "50% to 60% of the time."

Skubic also said that over the past year, Crispin Porter Bogusky has declined participating in at least three big-brand reviews — including one he wouldn't name whose conditions, as he described them, were identical to General Mills'.

Brands argue that IP clauses are a necessary legal defense

Robinson acknowledged there are unethical people in the marketing world. He said he's seen brand clients "hide" IP ownership clauses in the NDAs that agencies sign near the final round of a pitch, when they can't walk away because they've already spent thousands of dollars and work hours pursuing the business. And he said Ark Advisors does not run reviews where agencies aren't paid for their work.

But Robinson also said many brands require IP ownership as a legal defense. And in some cases their fears may be justified.

He recalled a review in which the losing agency, which had not signed an IP clause, threatened to sue after the client ran an ad closely resembling its pitch. But Ark's own notes showed that the winning agency had proposed a nearly identical idea.

An IP clause could have prevented this situation by requiring both agencies to agree that the client owned the rights to all their creative concepts.

Eric Lachter, the former head of brand marketing for Sony PlayStation and Roku who helped oversee reviews for those companies, said it's not uncommon to see five or more ideas that have "50% to 80% overlap," especially when clients ask competing agencies to focus on certain words, phrases, or sentiments.

But brands increasingly have the upper hand, and plenty of agencies agree to the clauses

Clients have been able to enforce IP clauses because plenty of agencies agree to them.

Lachter said brands have gained power over agencies in the past 20 years as Facebook and Google have brought down the cost of digital advertising and firms that specialize in areas like experiential marketing, influencers, and brand consulting, have proliferated.

As a result, clients feel empowered to cherry pick the services they want from agencies, Lachter said. And while brands like Nike and Coca-Cola will always need big agencies to produce flashy ad campaigns, Lachter said around 80% of advertising today is transactional work that's driven by short-term goals.

Hill said the only way to stop the trend is for agencies "to lock arms and say no," but that there's little sign of such an organized movement.

SEE ALSO: An ad-industry-salary spreadsheet is going viral, and its entries range from an assistant account exec making $40,000 to a chief strategy officer earning $500,000

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NOW WATCH: 9 items to avoid buying at Costco

• The plant-based protein wave shows no signs of slowing down and has made its way to the cereal aisle, thanks to a range of challenger brands making cereal that they claim is low-carb, grain-free and keto-friendly.
• One such brand is Three Wishes, launched just this month by Ian and Margaret Wishingrad, a husband and wife duo with a background in marketing, who wanted to create cereal that was "cleaner and more nutritionally-dense." 
• I tried all three of the brand's flavors to see how they compared to fan favorites like Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and I found that it tasted as good as, and sometimes better than regular cereal, and contains far less sugar and carbs
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The plant-based protein wave shows no signs of slowing down and has made its way to the cereal aisle. 

What was once a sugary, childhood indulgence is now metamorphosing into a healthier version of itself, thanks to plant-based proteins like pea and chickpea and a number of challenger brands trying to take on Kellogg's and General Mills with cereal that they claim is low-carb, grain-free and keto-friendly.

One such newcomer is Three Wishes, a cereal brand launched just this month by Ian and Margaret Wishingrad, a husband and wife duo with a background in marketing, who wanted to create cereal that was "cleaner and more nutritionally-dense" than what's been ruling the roost for years.

The inspiration came from seeing plant-based protein brands like chickpea-based pasta alternative Banza take off, as well as the desire to feed their two-year-old son better. Three Wishes, they claim, is a high protein, low sugar, and grain-free breakfast cereal that does not sacrifice taste. 

So how does the newcomer stack up to the reigning champions? I decided to put Three Wishes to test against some familiar cereal faces: Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Fruit Loops.

SEE ALSO: I served Popeyes' Cajun turkey at my Friendsgiving dinner, but I will probably never do it again

Three Wishes is available in popular cereal flavors like cinnamon, honey, and an unsweetened flavor. It retails at a suggested price of $5.99 at smaller grocery stores across New York, and at $7.99 on Amazon, and will soon be more widely available.

I tried the honey flavor earlier, and the cinnamon and unsweetened flavor with other competitor brands the day after Thanksgiving.

The cinnamon flavor was tasty and crunchy, with the cinnamon powder adding more flavor to the milk. It tasted just like Cinnamon Taste Crunch, but was far less messy to eat. It masks the taste of chickpea and pea protein — its two primary ingredients — fairly well, and has a nice kick to it.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch is an old favorite of mine, but I wouldn't think twice to ditch it in favor of Three Wishes, particularly if I was trying to get healthier and didn't want to sacrifice the taste. Cinnamon Toast Crunch has a fourth of the protein (2 grams), nearly two times as many carbs (33 grams), and four times the sugar (12 grams) compared to Three Wishes.

The honey flavor was also pretty good. It was crunchy and sweet, but not as overtly sweet as Honey Nut Cheerios. My colleague Lauren Johnson and I tried this flavor at our office recently and were both fans.

Three Wishes again may be "healthier" than Honey Nut Cheerios, but the latter has a distinct nutty flavor that Three Wishes lacked. Cheerios O's are also less dense and thinner than Three Wishes. So Three Wishes has some work to do on the flavor profile of its honey pack.

Last, I ate the unsweetened version of Three Wishes — a chunky, flavorless concoction of chickpea and pea protein that doesn't taste like anything. It's what you want to be eating if you're trying to cut down on sugar while still getting enough nutrition. But it was my least favorite.

I followed that by Fruit Loops — the medley of fruity albeit artificial flavors loved by many — not the fairest comparison I know. It was a party in my mouth after the unsweetened Three Wishes cereal. It's clear that they cater to very different target audiences.

Before my final verdict, it's worth noting that Three Wishes has some stiff competition in the healthy cereal category. Magic Spoon, for example, is an upstart that launched earlier this year and seems to have not just more variety but more protein (12 grams) versus Three Wishes' 8 grams. However, while Magic Spoon is focusing on a direct-to-consumer business, Three Wishes wants to focus on retail, said Ian Wishingrad.

Read More:Magic Spoon is a new 'childlike cereal for adults' that's high in protein and low in sugar — I tried all 4 flavors and now I'm hooked

Overall, Three Wishes is a pretty great alternative for those looking to enjoy cereal minus the sugar and carb overload. Its honey and cinnamon flavors don't compromise on taste and are as good as any generic cereal in the market, and its O's are in fact, crunchier. I'd skip the unsweetened flavor though unless you're keen on adding flavoring yourself.

• Furious customers say that Walmart canceled their Apple Watch orders up to two days after they purchased the early Black Friday deal.
• On Friday, more than a dozen customers took to social media to complain that Walmart canceled their orders. 
• Shoppers said that Walmart sold out of its Apple Watch Series 3 mere minutes after the deal went live on Thanksgiving Day. 
• Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Angry customers are complaining that Walmart canceled their Apple Watch orders, forcing them to miss out on early Black Friday deals. 

On Thanksgiving Day, some shoppers took to social media to express disappointment that Walmart sold out of its Apple Watch Series 3 deal mere minutes after the retailer kicked off its Black Friday sale. 

On Friday, more customers began complaining that Walmart had canceled their orders up to two days after they originally went through. 

The Chicago resident Matthew Seelig told Business Insider he purchased an Apple Watch from the Walmart website right when Black Friday deals began on Wednesday at 10 p.m. He received a confirmation email shortly afterward that provided him with an in-store pickup date of December 10.

However, on Friday morning, Seelig found an email from Walmart.com in his inbox notifying him that his order had been canceled. In the email, viewed by Business Insider, Walmart says, "We're really sorry, but the items shown below are out of stock," adding that the order was canceled indefinitely "since we don't know when we'll get them in again." 

Seelig said he was concerned that even if the product were ultimately restocked, Walmart might not honor his Black Friday deal. To ensure he would still be able to purchase an Apple Watch at a discounted rate, he got in touch with a Walmart customer-service representative on Friday morning, who told him to "rest assured, we will honor the price," according to a transcript of his conversation obtained by Business Insider.

"I did find it frustrating, because I thought this was a way around going to the store and avoiding the crowds," Seelig said. "I'm disappointed to see that they just sort of canceled the order, and I'm not really sure why."

In addition to Seelig, at least a dozen more customers who purchased the Apple Watch on Walmart's site on Wednesday took to social media to complain about cancellations. 

"I need you to explain how you can cancel an order that was placed on Wednesday night online because it's now 'out of stock', but it's still available for purchase online at a much higher price?"one person commented on Walmart's Facebook page.

Walmart was not immediately able to provide Business Insider with a comment on the apparent cancellations. The company has been responding to upset shoppers on social media, asking them to send a direct message to Walmart's customer-service account. 

• Read more about Black Friday:
• Walmart shoppers are threatening to boycott the store after discovering that employees aren't paid extra to work on Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving is becoming one of the most popular days to shop online
• Costco lost out on an estimated $11 million in sales when its website crashed on Thanksgiving Day
• People are declaring the day after Thanksgiving 'Buy Nothing Day' as part of a backlash against Black Friday

Join the conversation about this story »

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