Susan Schiekofer To Fill Ari Bluman's Role At GroupM; Global Ad Spend May Go Down Post-Brexit

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Ari Bluman’s Successor

Susan Schiekofer will take on late advertising pioneer Ari Bluman’s role as GroupM’s head of digital investment. Schiekofer has big shoes to fill [AdExchanger coverage], but more than 20 years of digital experience within GroupM positions her well for the job. She previously launched Neo@Ogilvy, served as president of digital at MEC as well as managing director of digital investment at GroupM, where she oversaw all digital investment at MediaCom and Maxus. Schiekofer will report to Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer of GroupM US. “I could not think of a better person to succeed Ari, who not only made an indelible mark at GroupM, but across the entire industry,” Scanzoni said in a statement. Read more.

Adxit

If history is any indicator, Britain’s decision to leave the EU will decrease global ad spend, writes IPG Mediabrands Global Chief Strategy/Creative Officer Mat Baxter in a LinkedIn post. That’s because consumer confidence in the economy dictates marketer ad spend. “Whenever major global events rock consumer confidence marketers make significant reductions to their advertising budgets,” he writes. “It happened after 9/11. It happened during the global financial crisis. And it will happen following the Brexit.” Baxter (of course) thinks marketers should “spend their way out of trouble” rather than tighten their belts, but expects a 10-40% drop until the implications are clear.

Frenemy No.1

Comcast and Netflix have a strained relationship – with the respective CEOs trading barbs for years over who pays for streaming costs – but the entertainment titans finally came to a deal to include Netflix on Comcast’s X1 TV/internet bundle. Netflix has similar deals with lots of OTT hubs, including Apple TV, Roku, Google Chromecast and the smart-TV manufacturer Vizio, which pre-installs Netflix and has a branded button on its remotes. Comcast may have no love for Netflix, but it needs the streaming service on its platform to stay competitive. (Oh, and Netflix partners get revenue-sharing incentives for new subscribers through their service.) More at Recode.

Search Pintent

Pinterest is hoping to up its search advertising “ahead of a much anticipated IPO,” writes George Slefo at Ad Age. Jon Kaplan, Pinterest’s global head of sales, says “we never spoke to people who buy search even though we have over two billion monthly searches on the platform.” New product rollouts include keyword buying similar to what’s offered by Google and competing search engines and dynamic personalization if, say, a retailer matches a CRM profile with a Pinterest user [AdExchanger coverage of that news from earlier this year]. More.

Swatting The Flies

“I don’t trust tech vendors,” said Damien Cummings, global head of digital marketing at the British Standard Chartered Bank. “I trust agencies, marketers trust agencies, as they are perceived as relatively impartial. It’s often abused but there is a high level of trust.” Regarding the big tech vendors he has no choice but to work with (aka Facebook and Google), “There can be love but it’s an arranged marriage.” For most tech vendors, though, “We know they’ll be obsolete in six months, they are just trying to get commission out of us.” More at The Drum.

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