Agencies

The Association of National Advertisers’ crusade for greater agency transparency entered phase two on Monday, when marketing analytics firm Ebiquity and its subsidiary, FirmDecisions, released an anticipated set of guidelines for advertisers on how to maintain transparent relationships with their agencies. The overarching message: Agencies may have crossed a few lines, but the onus is […]

Advertisers’ concerns around viewability and fraud are slowing down spend on digital advertising, said Daryl Simm, chairman and CEO of Omnicom Media Group during the holding company’s Q2 2016 earnings call on Thursday morning. “While [advertisers] are continuing to grow their digital budgets, there is a tap at the brakes in that space as some […]

“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 Craig Dempster, EVP, Agency Group Leader, Merkle. With the celebrity sightings, gourmet food and entertainment and rosé wine flowing, it’s easy to understand why many see events like Cannes Lions […]

Social listening data is often used only to influence social campaigns. Siloes within agencies can keep it from informing media campaigns in other channels. IPG Mediabrands, for instance, has multiple media buying agencies, including a search and social unit called Reprise Media as well as its trading desk, Cadreon. Reprise and Cadreon made a good […]

For many in the native space, the always-on-the-horizon prospect of the Promised Land has been a hard sell to other digital stakeholders. And though the industry has grown at a rapid clip, there’s still deep confusion over questions as basic and crucial as “What is native?” Native is “a broad term that lacks definition,” said […]

Nancy Hill, who served nine years as president and CEO of the agency trade group the 4A’s, will step down next year, the group said Wednesday. Read the release. The 4A’s board of directors, led by Horizon Media head honcho Bill Koenigsberg, will search for her replacement and “ensure a smooth transition” by June 2017. Hill wrote […]

Another day, another digital media investment. This time, it’s Woven Digital – parent publisher to guy-oriented properties BroBible, Uproxx and HitFix. The company raised $18.5 million from WPP Ventures, money it will use to expand video production and content around verticals like sports, tech and gaming. Woven Digital got its start six years ago as […]

The out-of-home market is turning its real-world infrastructure into a tool for data-driven digital media. An OOH campaign nowadays for a CPG client may look more like a tapestry of strategic relationships. The media provider may allow some mobile tracking (in the US that probably means Outfront or Clear Channel, which together account for a […]

The fallout from the Association of National Advertisers’ report on media agency transparency has taken an unexpected twist. WPP’s media buying unit, GroupM, is suing Ebiquity’s media auditing arm, FirmDecisions, claiming it violated an NDA and misused classified information that GroupM accidentally sent to FirmDecisions. Campaign first reported the story. According to the complaint, GroupM […]

If the UK follows through with its decision to leave the European Union, industry experts say London won’t lose its throne as the epicenter of European advertising. It will, however, have to adjust as the world transacts differently with the British media market. The country is expected to invest twice as much in digital media […]

Hours after the United Kingdom voted to quit the European Union, its most prominent ad industry employee is feeling… well, in his own words: “Very disappointed, but the electorate has spoken.” WPP Group CEO Sir Martin Sorrell told AdExchanger in a statement that “The resulting uncertainty, which will be considerable, will obviously slow decision-making and […]

Agency creatives can be iffy about applying programmatic concepts, such as targeting, data layering or real-time bidding. Not in all cases, of course – they recognize the moments when programmatic can boost a campaign. But programmatic advocates, they feel, sometimes excessively focus on the technology. They also have a tendency to automate more than what […]

That the media and advertising landscape is in flux isn’t news to any holding company exec. The question is how best to wrangle it – or at least position yourself so you and your clients can take advantage in the future. Dominique Delport, global managing director of French holding company Havas Media Group, has a […]

Are programmatic advertising and creative storytelling finally coming together in a meaningful way? It’s a good question to ask at the Cannes Lions festival, where the whole point is creativity – or it used to be, before the twin powers of data and media started elbowing in on the joint a few years back. But […]

When WPP officially launched Connect in May, it hoped the endeavor would evolve into a core aspect of its media buying umbrella GroupM. “What we’re building centrally will eventually become part of the overall GroupM operation,” said Connect CEO Ruud Wanck. “We’re looking at it as an incubator. But as all media goes programmatic over […]

Overall ad spend will enjoy its strongest growth in six years – 5.4%, reaching $480 billion this year – largely driven by double-digit gains in digital media. The fast-growing sector shows no sign of a slowdown: The interplay of programmatic, online video, social media and mobile will drive digital ad spend growth through 2018, according to […]

Agency buyers believe Snapchat’s partner program, which allows third parties to buy inventory, will help the messaging service migrate from a bespoke buy to a more central part of a media plan. “If you look at the scale and daily time spent, especially among millennials, you have to consider Snapchat a core reach vehicle,” said […]

In its critical agency report, The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) didnt touch on the complexities of the modern media-buying landscape, said Rob Norman, chief digital officer of WPP’s media-buying arm GroupM, in a blog post Tuesday. Norman’s response comes after the ANA mic-dropped its investigative report into agency transparency, criticizing agencies for taking rebates and a […]

Merkle is introducing Publisher Addressable Marketplaces, which matches its advertisers’ CRM data with publishers’ subscriber data in order to target real people through partners like Pandora, Trusted Media Brands, Viant and LiveIntent. Publisher Addressable Marketplaces’ data onboarding and targeting capabilities are similar to Facebook’s hugely successful CRM matching program Custom Audiences, and its introduction comes […]

While it’s still too early to assess the repercussions of the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) media transparency report issued Tuesday, industry analysts expect the dynamics between advertisers and their programmatic trading desks to bear the burden of the impact. Though the 62-page report didn’t name names, it cited instances of non-transparent practices among agency […]

“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, chief operating officer at Goodway Group. In any case throughout human history where capitalism and markets were suppressed, black markets sprouted and thrived to take their place. North Korea, […]

Media rebates and other nontransparent business practices by US agencies are pervasive, according to a long-awaited study from investigative firm K2 Intelligence that was released Tuesday. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) commissioned the study last year in light of mounting marketer concerns about undisclosed media agency revenues. Read the full report. Of the 117 […]

Despite its tax and auditing acumen, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has 3,000 creatives, engineers, strategists and technologists dedicated to experience design and digital services that span ecom to cybersecurity. Like competing consultancies Deloitte Digital and Accenture Interactive, PwC Digital has grown both organically and through acquisition via its 2013 purchase of digital and creative consultancy, BGT, and […]

Agencies may come under tougher scrutiny soon as a result of an Association of National Advertisers (ANA) report due out this month. The report on agency rebate practices is the result of a monthslong investigation by K2 Intelligence and Ebiquity and is likely to bring into focus how advertisers conduct audits of their agency partners. […]

Ari Bluman, a highly-regarded digital media exec whose passion was only rivaled by his bluntness, has passed away after a long fight with cancer. He was 44. To those who knew him, Bluman was a “man of conviction” who “lived his beliefs” and practiced “radical candor” in order to “improve the industry he loved and […]

Instagram announced Tuesday that it’s opening up its advertising Partner Program to a new category of member: media buyers. The program today is comprised of a set of about 50 vendors certified for Instagram’s ad tech, content marketing and community management services. Bringing media buying services into the fold is the natural next move for Instagram […]

After decades of specializing in hardware and on-premise servers, IBM is emphasizing its new-wave agency IBM Interactive Experience (IBM iX), a mashup of design, systems integration, analytics and the Internet of Things, with billings in the billions. IBM iX made three digital, design and brand agency acquisitions in a single week this winter when it snapped […]

Many agree there’s a great need for holding companies to integrate their media buying structure “horizontally”: to collaborate rather than compete across groups. Is it possible the obstacle lies not with the agency, but with the client? Executives from Dentsu Aegis, IPG, Havas, Omnicom and WPP took up the question at the Modern Marketing Summit […]

“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, chief operating officer at Goodway Group. We’re addicted to what’s new and shiny. A breaking news alert may flash across the screen and, despite knowing the alert is likely […]

Clients want their agencies to operate in fluid, multidisciplinary teams. That’s hard to achieve for larger holding companies traditionally siloed into distinct arms. Disparate units working toward internal goals often find themselves competing instead of collaborating to meet client KPIs. Hearst-owned marketing agency iCrossing is challenging this model with a new structure that promotes omnichannel […]