Agencies

MDC Partners is the latest holding company to place its programmatic, search and social talent into a team that spans across its media network, MDC Media Partners. The group, which doesn’t have a name, was announced internally on Thursday and contains roughly 100 experts across biddable media and digital planning from agencies Assembly, Unique Influence […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Castree Out GroupM North America CEO Tim Castree has stepped down from his role after less than a year on the job, Business Insider reports. Castree was promoted to CEO in late 2018, after leading the merger of media agencies MEC and Maxus, with […]

WPP has struggled to grow in recent years, as key clients in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) reduce spend and its traditional creative agencies underperform. While the tech vertical and its media business are relative bright spots, they aren’t big enough to buttress the entire holding company. WPP’s Q3 performance, which the company reported Friday, […]

When Roku bought dataxu for $150 million on Tuesday, it said the deal would make it easier for buyers of all sizes to access OTT inventory at scale, and use Roku’s ID off platform. Roku is basically trying to make more inventory, powered with better data, available to advertisers, said Frank Sinton, president and founder […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Power In Numbers Attorneys general from 31 additional states have joined New York AG Letitia James’s probe into Facebook, bringing the number of states involved to 46 (not including the territory of Guam, which is also hopping aboard). James first launched the probe, which […]

Martin Sorrell went on the attack in a fireside chat with Accenture Interactive senior managing director Glen Hartman. The S4 executive chairman fixated on Accenture’s operating and incentive structure and how much autonomy creative agencies maintained within its network. “Accenture talks about one P&L,” he said during the session at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO New York. […]

Ad tech company Ad/Fin ceased business operations on Friday after a tumultuous few years of existence. Launched in 2012 as a tool to benchmark pricing data in programmatic media, Ad/Fin made enemies of the agency holding companies when it teamed up with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Ebiquity on a 2016 report uncovering […]

Reprise is a specialty agency born in the age of channel planning. What started as a search specialty shop combined in 2018 with IPG mobile agency Ansible and social agency Society as audience-based buying took off. While channel expertise still remained relevant, distinguishing agency services by channels didn’t resonate as much with clients. So when […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Welcome To The Jungle Safari introduced a new private browsing mode that disables the now-common tactic among news companies of blocking incognito traffic, which they do because readers use private browsing to avoid paywalls. “This will lead to a hard paywall for all readers […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Rebate Redux Media agencies are paying settlements to clients as a result of contract audits sparked by the ANA’s 2016 transparency report, AdAge reports. Nearly 100 audits have taken place, but it’s not clear which clients or agencies are involved or if any money […]

Publicis reported Q3 earnings on a last-minute call with investors Thursday after results came in worse than expected, causing the holding company to lower its guidance through 2020. Organic growth was down 2.7% to $2.86 billion in Q3, and down 1.4% to $7.6 billion in the first nine months of the year. So Publicis lowered […]

You can subscribe to AdExchanger Talks on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. LiveRamp is by far the most widely used platform for first-party data onboarding and identity resolution. This week on the podcast, its gregarious CEO Scott Howe talks about the company’s wild ride – from private concern to […]

Chief marketing officers are surrounded by disruption. And they’re realizing that the branding skills that got them the top marketing seat aren’t the same skills in data and operations that are going to drive their businesses forward, said Merkle CEO David Williams. “The average CMO is in a tough spot,” he said. “They didn’t grow […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Plaintiff Engagement Remember Facebook’s video metrics mess? That situation led to a class action lawsuit, in which ad agencies alleged that Facebook inflated video engagement. And now, a proposed settlement would have Facebook pay $40 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The money would […]

IPG threw its hat in the crowded ring of tech and data service hybrids Monday with the debut of Kinesso. The new business will encompass the agency ad tech unit Cadreon, the internal data hub AMP and the Mediabrands Data and Technology group. With between 500 and 600 employees in the new business, Kinesso will […]

Small businesses in the United States are driving ad spend growth globally, thanks to self-serve and cost-efficient ad buying tools from Facebook and Google. While local businesses traditionally use local TV and radio, producing a commercial can cost thousands of dollars. And even though some DTC brands are targeting on OTT, production for those spots […]

Creatives still struggle to use data. Holding companies may have spent $12 billion collectively on data assets over the past decade, but creative agencies still don’t know how to use those tools, according to Forrester. But creative agency Heat has been able to bake AI into its creative process by tapping into its parent company […]

Brands are hesitant to go all-in on influencer marketing, which much like the early days of programmatic, is rife with black-box business models. Pricing and compensation vary significantly across influencers, and a lack of benchmarks and measurement make it difficult for brands to know if they’re getting a fair rate. Confusion around the value of […]

People are consuming more news content than ever, but some advertisers avoid it like the plague. In fact, the word “plague” is probably on a bunch of keyword blacklists. “We battle the narrative that news is an unsafe place for marketers,” said Christine Cook, SVP and CRO of CNN’s digital portfolio, during a panel Tuesday […]

Agency holding companies have spent $12 billion on data assets over the past five years but have yet to successfully deploy those assets at their creative agencies, according to a Forrester report released Monday. “It’s still very much a media proposition,” said Jay Pattisall, Forrester analyst and author of the report. “[Creative] seems to be […]

Despite Xandr’s positioning as the TV platform of the future during its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara last week, agency buyers want to see more progress toward that goal. Certainly, Xandr has the right assets and strategy to create a programmatic marketplace for TV. Over the past year, Xandr launched a publisher network called Community, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. I Spy  A study from Princeton University and the University of Chicago revealed the extent of ad tracking on OTT platforms like Roku and Amazon Fire TV, as well as the lack of controls to manage trackers. According to the study, 89% of channels […]

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing budgets are starting to include larger-scale media, which is having a massive impact on national TV ad spend, according to Magna’s fall 2019 ad spend forecast, released Thursday. Marketing spend in the DTC category increased 30% YoY in Q2 2019. And DTCs spent 50% more on national TV in particular. “These new […]

S4 Capital had a solid second quarter earnings report on Wednesday, with revenue up 41.6% to $108.5 million in the first half of 2019. But that didn’t stop CEO Martin Sorrell from spending a significant portion of the earnings call throwing shade at his competitors, especially his former empire WPP. When asked whether S4 needs […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Nico Neumann, assistant professor and fellow, Centre for Business Analytics at Melbourne Business School. Advertising agencies are often masters of creating and developing brands. To survive and keep striving, they […]

IPG revealed a series of changes to its executive suite on Monday that brings media leadership to the top of the organization. Philippe Krakowsky, IPG’s chief strategy and talent officer and CEO of IPG Mediabrands, will assume the newly-created position of chief operating officer. He will retain his duties as chief strategy and talent officer […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Hold Up In the event of an economic downturn, holding companies – specifically WPP and Publicis – could be in a vulnerable position. Both companies are saddled with debt and plummeting stock values that will be difficult to recoup, especially as clients bring more […]

The Martin Agency is best known for its iconic creative ideas. Who hasn’t seen the Geico Gecko? But in addition to doing creative work for blue chip clients such as Geico, Oreo and Buffalo Wild Wings, The Martin Agency is transforming into a sophisticated media organization. The creative agency has had media as part of […]

Dentsu-owned performance agency iProspect said Wednesday it has acquired independent performance agency MuteSix. Terms of the deal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were not disclosed. MuteSix does creative production and performance marketing for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, including Theragun, Burst Oral Care and Grunt Style, and enterprise clients such as Petco and Shell. The […]

Two days after LinkedIn announced its Audience Engagement API, Omnicom has released a product built around it – an analytics tool called “Professional Audiences.” Omnicom released its B2B analytics tool Thursday, and it’s designed to help creative, business development and media teams generate insights for campaigns or pitches, said Slavi Samardzija, global CEO of Annalect, […]