Agencies

Why is Publicis still winning?; The Dollar Shave Club gets into influencer marketing; and publishers are tossing their cultural critics aside.

Google’s search antitrust trial ends with a whimper; the pitfalls of agency-owned SSPs; Perplexity axes its ads business; and brands are still building big-ticket metaverse experiences.

Dentsu might sell its overseas business; a Prebid update worries the buy side; and Washington State imposes a new ad tax.

Straddling the line between content creator and content-conscious mother offers a fresh perspective on the importance of media literacy and advertisers’ role in the online ecosystem. 

Is TTD forcing agencies to adopt the new Kokai interface despite claims they can still use the interface of their choice? Here’s what we were able to find out.

Walmart has some new rules for third-party sellers; WPP wins Mastercard; and marketers should get into VTubers.

What’s the point of a market research survey that could take weeks, when consumer sentiment is rollercoasting up and down every day? That’s the problem MX8 Labs aims to tackle.

Television advertising has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years, with connected TV (CTV) emerging as a powerful channel for marketers seeking the impact of traditional television with the precision of digital targeting.

The SSP is betting on the DOJ’s antitrust remedies, plus closer relationships with agencies, DSPs and mid-sized advertisers, to help it eat some of Google’s lunch.

Change can be bumpy. From The Trade Desk’s Solimar-to-Kokai transition to Nielsen’s transition to its Big Data + Panel offering, we go inside customers’ challenges with these two transforming platforms.

The Trade Desk currently has no concrete plans to deprecate its legacy Solimar user interface in order to push adoption of its new UI, Kokai.

Ad agency hold cos have broadcasted their earnings. As AI and acquisitions transform their businesses, there are clear winners and losers. With media as a strong spot, we discuss the paradox of “transparent nontransparency.”

Carat is using “people-powered” AI to build agents that understand how to best reach specific audience personas.

During what was supposed to be a quarter marked by financial uncertainty, IPG did slightly better than expected.

For advertisers, the holiday season poses an optimal opportunity to reach a new and broader audience, boost sales and foster brand loyalty with customers. And this season, CTV should be a core area of focus.

Sing along, now: “Everything is an ad network!” Plus, Publicis is doing A-OK and Substack is changing its tune on advertising.

The rapid evolution of generative AI technology has created uncertainty between brands and their agencies. But finding answers can be difficult when advertisers often don’t even know what questions to ask.

Water is wet, the sun sets in the west and Omnicom still says it expects to close its merger with IPG in the second half of this year.

Curated deals were once seen as a smart way to bring structure to programmatic chaos. Today, they’ve become table stakes.

YouTube accounts are uploading recent Hollywood movies, racking up views while advertisers (and sometimes creators) remain in the dark. Plus: Could Cloudflare’s AI bot blockers provide a salve for digital media’s traffic declines?

AI Overviews are even dinging Google Search ads’ traffic; WPP downgrades its earnings forecast; and Google’s AI competitors launch their own web browsers.

Critics say the FTC’s deal with OMG/IPG prohibits agency practices that don’t exist. And it distracts from legitimate concerns about brand safety news blocking and principal media.

Have agency holdcos put too many eggs in the AI basket?; Temu has come back to us now at the turn of the tariff tide; and Cloudflare wants to help sites from getting scraped.

Where would the New York Times be without its recipes?; Cannes Lions deals with controversy; and Netflix wants to get ultra-personal with its ads.

The FTC approved the Omnicom-IPG merger, but with a brand-safety caveat: The agencies cannot create agency-level blocklists of any media that’s political or ideological. With Ad Fontes CEO Vanessa Otero, we unpack the consent order’s ramifications.

The FTC puts some odd stipulations on Omnicom-IPG; influencer marketing is the new normal; Google is cutting its smart TV group.

From Cannes Lions, our editorial team discusses the mix of perspectives on the ad industry’s application of AI: the opportunity, the hesitation and the predictions of how it will disrupt marketing.

Expect more ad agency holdco consolidation in the next year; people are starting to talk like ChatGPT; inside the weirdness of matching political funds.

As premium game prices skyrocket and paid subscriptions and cloud-based gaming services take off, marketers sense a chance to defray rising costs with ad revenue – perhaps dispelling some doubts about the value of more ads in games.

In the latest sign of massive change among ad agency hold cos, Mark Read is stepping down as leader of WPP. We unpack the impact of AI on agency hold cos and media, including WPP Media’s prediction that 2025 will be the first year in which the majority of ad spend flows through user-generated content.