Mediabrands Keeping Up With Digital; Panasonic Sees A Future In Smart TVs

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Future Media Agency

Mediabrands CEO Matt Seiler wants to prove media agencies don’t have to fall behind the curve when it comes to innovation by taking his company firmly into the automated, digital age. A profile in Adweek outlines how Seiler has advocated for a pay-per-performance model and collapsed P&Ls. “Matt’s not a media dork or specialist,” said Jay Sears, SVP for marketing development at Rubicon Project. “Because of that, he brings Mediabrands buying to the cool kids table. Automation brings efficiencies to the salt mines. As an account guy, Matt is still client-focused and can explain automation to clients in the plain English they understand.” Read more.

Smarter TVs

The primary use for smart TVs right now may be simple things like streaming Netflix, but Panasonic believes the future holds much more for these devices. With cloud computing advances, we’ll see gaming on TV along with much more robust Web browsing and content discovery, according to VentureBeat. Read more. Slicker ad-messaging options are bound to go along with those advances.

Reshaping Brands

JPMorgan Chase has a new CMO, Kristin Lemkau, who has worked for the company in different capacities for some time, according to Ad Age. “The thing I’m most proud of there was repositioning and rebranding JPMorgan,” Lemkau said. “At the time, we had a lot of brand confusion and messiness. We worked hard to build out the brand value propositions and identities of JPMorgan and Chase separately.” Read more.

Valuations

Boutique investment bank LUMA Partners sees SaaS and programmatic driving company valuations in the next couple of years. LUMA chief Terence Kawaja concludes in an opinion piece on Re/code, “We are likely to see several programmatic companies pursue the public market over the next 24 months. Not all candidates have pure-play models. The market will need to assess each of these business models and the companies’ respective roles in the ecosystem in order to determine their appropriate valuations.” Read more.

Native Deceptions

Native advertising, formerly known as advertorial, has attracted the attention of the FTC, which is concerned about adequate disclosure. Kirk Cheyfitz, CEO and chief editorial officer of Story Worldwide, believes publishers shouldn’t bet on native ads sticking around — and not only because of regulators. He writes in a column for PandoDaily that as more channels open up for brands to express themselves without the need for publishers, the reliance on native advertising will drop. Read more.

Funding It