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Something is wrong with WPP Group – or, perhaps, many somethings. On its Q3 call with investors Thursday, management detailed a list of ailments longer than that of a septuagenarian overdue for his physical. North America? “Further weakening.” Creative agencies? “Doing poorly.” Account losses? As bad as you’ve heard. Revenue was down .8%, and the […]

After stagnant growth in 2017, holding companies are getting rid of assets that aren’t related to their core focus on digital transformation, programmatic, data and technology. Omnicom, Publicis Groupe and WPP have significantly pruned their portfolios this quarter. IPG and Havas, on the other hand, have disposed of smaller and less strategic agencies in the […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, president and partner at Goodway Group. The goal of every marketer is to spend the least amount of money possible to achieve the best possible results – to spend right to the point where […]

IPG’s $2.3 billion acquisition of Acxiom Marketing Solutions will transform the holding company’s services around its clients first-party data, said CEO Michael Roth said on the company’s Q3 earnings call Friday. “Acxiom is a world-class data asset,” he said. “As all companies look to make their first-party data work harder for them, and do so […]

Martin Sorrell is bullish on Amazon. The platform will eventually reach $100 billion in ad spend, Sorrell, the CEO of S4 Capital and former WPP honcho, predicted Tuesday at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO in New York City. He did not mention a timeline. In Amazon’s Q3 earnings in July, the company said it brought in $2.5 […]

Programmatic dollars flowing to video and mobile have finally surpassed spend on desktop and banner ads. This year, mobile made up 53% of global programmatic spend by device, while video ads accounted for 51% of programmatic spend by format, according to Magna’s Programmatic 2018 report. (Magna did not include video inventory on over-the-top devices in […]

Facebook’s Marketing Partner (FMP) program is getting a bit of a facelift with the addition of new badge categories and tools to help with measurement and creative. Hundreds of tech companies, agencies and consultants jammed into the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on Wednesday to get the skinny at Facebook’s sixth global marketing partner […]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has contacted the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), requesting cooperation from the trade group and its members in a criminal investigation into US media buying practices. The ANA detailed the FBI’s probe in a statement to members and validated recent unsourced reports from The Wall Street Journal and The […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Setting Up A Private Practice Amazon’s private-label brand business is on pace to generate $25 billion by 2022, up from $7.5 billion this year, according to investment firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. And Amazon has quietly taken measures to rapidly grow its exclusive brand roster, […]

Despite the massive steps the ad industry has made in figuring out addressable TV just this year, advancement comes not from stunning breakthroughs, but simply from attaching a few additional pipes and freeing a new trickle of inventory or data. On Thursday, Adobe Advertising Cloud TV soldered together a few more of those connections by […]

One month on the job, WPP CEO Mark Read is making big changes at the holding company. WPP will combine digital agency VML and 100-year-old ad agency Young & Rubicam into a new agency named VMLY&R, the group announced Wednesday. WPP tapped Jon Cook, VML’s CEO since 2011, to lead the company and its 7,000 […]

As the traditional holding company model declines, new models are rising as competition. While the “big six” – WPP, Publicis Groupe, IPG, Dentsu Aegis, Havas and Omnicom – still rule, legacy structures and poor financial performance are causing their dominance to wane. In March, WPP lost $2.6 billion from its market cap. Omnicom has been […]

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The temperature is cooling, the leaves are falling and the skies are turning the color of slate. It’s a time for mystery. This week […]

Advertisers are moving over the top. Over-the-top TV (OTT) ad spend will grow 40% to reach $2 billion this year, according to Magna’s US Ad Spend Forecast Fall 2018, released Thursday. And addressable TV campaigns will reach $800 million in 2018. The uptick in OTT investment is driven by consumer adoption of smart TVs and […]

Media agencies once used their buying power to compete with each other. But as clients transform their marketing processes for a digital world, clout doesn’t have the cache it once did, according to Forrester’s first Global Media Agency Wave Q3 2018, which was released Monday. “In a programmatic environment, buying clout becomes less important,” said […]

Wunderman global CEO Mel Edwards has big shoes to fill. Last Thursday, the CRM and digital agency said it would replace CEO Mark Read, recently named CEO of WPP, with Edwards, who previously led the agency in EMEA. Read is credited with turning Wunderman around from a legacy direct marketing company into a digital powerhouse. […]

MDC CEO and Chairman Scott Kauffman will step down from the holding company. Kauffman will remain CEO and retain his board seat until the company finds a replacement, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news Wednesday. But MDC has been in decline for a while. It lost half its stock value […]

Martin Sorrell took a page out of his own playbook when he launched his new holding company, S4 Capital, in April. S4 released a 191-page prospectus Tuesday detailing its financials, share structure and go-to-market strategy. If all goes as planned, the company will begin trading on the London Stock Exchange on Sept. 28. But Sorrell’s […]

Independent media agency Mediasmith has a new owner – but clients might not notice. The San Francisco-based agency, launched in 1978 by David Smith and Karen McFee, has sold to four members of its management team. COO John Cate, SVP and media director Greg Pomaro, VP of insights and technology Marcus Pratt and finance director […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. WPP and Nike have some new spokespeople. While Mark Read’s appointment at WPP was expected and uncontroversial, Colin Kaepernick headlining Nike’s new campaign was […]

WPP may have a new CEO, but it still has the same old problems. During its Q2 earnings report Tuesday, the holding company posted its first quarter of growth in a year, with like-for-like revenues up 1.6% for the first half of 2018 and 2.4% for Q2 to $9.6 billion. But the company’s strongest region, […]

WPP is set to knight its new CEO. Multiple publications Tuesday reported that as early as next week, the holding company is set to name Wunderman and WPP Digital CEO Mark Read the firm’s second-ever chief executive, following the departure of founder and longtime leader Martin Sorrell in April. (Update: WPP confirmed Read’s ascension on […]

In Netflix’s original film “Like Father,” the cruise line Royal Caribbean literally sets the stage for the movie – the brand is actually part of the story. While this sort of product placement isn’t new, it’s coming at a time when content providers are trying to decrease their ad loads and experimenting with new ways […]

Over the past year, GroupM media agency Essence has reduced its investment in third-party data segments for certain clients by more than half. While the decline has been most prominent in Europe, it began well before GDPR took effect and is totally independent of the regulation, said Ryan Storrar, Essence’s head of media activation in […]

This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world.  Lindsay Pattison isn’t messing around about increasing diversity in WPP’s top ranks. The former global CEO of GroupM agency Maxus was promoted to chief transformation officer of WPP last year. While the job’s purpose […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

“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 Jay Friedman, president and partner at Goodway Group. For media buyers today, ad tech platforms can be bucketed into two categories: the must-haves and nice-to-haves. For many, Google, Facebook and Amazon […]

Believe it or not, many marketers still use last-click attribution. Goodway Group President Jay Friedman has had enough of it. So, he’s pushing the indie programmatic platform to tie all campaign measurement to lift-based metrics. “By requiring a lift-based approach, we can avoid vanity metrics,” he said. “It’s changed the dynamic of our relationships with […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Slow Death What happened to the cable bundle? While the reason people are dropping their cable subscriptions is obvious (they’re expensive, relative to streaming options), what’s less obvious is how the cord-cutting trend started, Bloomberg reports. Many blame Netflix, because talent and shareholders looking […]