Agencies

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, COO at Goodway Group. For years it was an accepted truth: Buyers held the power in the digital advertising industry. Ad tech had effectively transferred control from sellers to buyers. When programmatic and […]

As programmatic commands a greater share of marketing budgets, trading desk knowledge will expand throughout organizations. Accuen expects its trading desk to decentralize when programmatic reaches 70% to 80% of media budgets industrywide, according to Megan Pagliuca, who became the CEO of Accuen after leaving Merkle late last year. That will happen in the next […]

Rob Norman will speak at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference, taking place in New York on January 20-21. If you were forced to name one media buying entity that sets the agenda for the rest of the industry, it would have to be WPP-owned GroupM. It was GroupM – umbrella to Mindshare, MEC, Xaxis and Essence […]

Influencer marketing found its stride in 2015, and some expect this year will bring it a big step closer to becoming a mature marketing channel. Influencer marketing has established itself as a media category, but “it will become even more important if done in an ordered and manageable way,” said Rob Norman, chief digital officer […]

For several months, IPG Mediabrands’ ad tech unit Cadreon has been testing Google’s cross-device measurement system, baked into DoubleClick advertiser products as of June. Krish Sailam, senior product manager of mobile for Cadreon, said the trading desk has run a few beta tests with advertisers, and noted conversion uplift has consistently reached the double digits. Cadreon […]

GroupM’s purchase of The Exchange Lab, a provider of marketing services and technology that connects multiple DSPs, comes at a time when agencies must tackle digital media fragmentation. While GroupM – WPP’s media-buying umbrella – faces walled gardens and siloed platforms, the Exchange Lab has a tool called Proteus, designed to provide a single interface […]

“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, COO at Goodway Group. Long ago there were only small specialty stores. Now we have Walmart, where we can buy tires, a pair of shorts, fertilizer and steaks for […]

For the first time outside of a recession, linear TV ad spend has stopped growing, according to global ad revenue updates by MAGNA Global and ZenithOptimedia, both released Monday. While national TV ad sales grew .3% to $42 billion in 2015, MAGNA predicted it will decrease by .3% in 2016. ZenithOptimedia’s Advertising Expenditures Forecast also […]

The emergence of data-enabled TV targeting is altering the agency buying structure. In 2014, WPP’s GroupM launched Modi Media, a unit that would become the poster child for so-called “advanced” TV ad buying. But it’s not the only agency group to build an offering geared to the fragmenting milieu of TV advertising. Others, such as […]

With the exception of back-to-school needs, office supply retailer Staples focuses on small-business owners. Like most brick-and-mortar retailers, Staples knew mobile played a vital role in its customers’ daily lives, but it was less clear from a media standpoint how mobile impacted the ultimate sales conversion. Staples wanted to use mobile to drive upper-funnel awareness […]

“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, COO at Goodway Group. All too often in today’s digital advertising industry, new agency hires are quickly handed the keys to technologies that can unleash millions of dollars in […]

Merkle has China on the mind. The CRM and performance marketing agency revealed Thursday it had entered into a reseller agreement with dominant Chinese search engine Baidu. Although the deal is not necessarily exclusive, it is the first of its kind for Baidu with a US partner agency. As a result of the deal, Merkle […]

“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 Stephanie Russell, vice president of enterprise solutions at Merkle.  Data-driven marketers now have the ability to target individual people – not just cookies – in so many types of media, […]

Judging from last week’s news, it’s tempting to say GroupM has got the programmatic religion. But that might be selling the holding company short. WPP Group’s media-buying arm, which controls $106 billion in global ad spending, last week promoted Xaxis CEO Brian Lesser to a big new job running its North America business. His elevation […]

Everyone talks about TV dollars leaking into digital, but what happens behind the scenes to make those dollars move? Vic Walia, senior director of brand marketing for Expedia, said it involves change management and rewiring old assumptions. “We’ve always invested heavily in TV as a brand, but we wanted to extend our reach beyond our […]

GroupM hopes its purchase of digital/media agency Essence on Wednesday (for undisclosed terms) will add a whole lot of Google expertise into WPP’s cluster of media agencies. After all, the formerly independent Essence is Google’s digital agency of record. “Google, as you might imagine, is keen on its global digital agency using the full set […]

It might surprise those who think of Merkle as only a CRM agency to hear it has a media practice that employs 400. Although the division has taken four years to construct, Merkle has over the past several months recruited a handful of media agency heavyweights (including ex-Razorfish COO Michael Komasinski) to help support its […]

NBCUniversal transacted 10-15% of its digital business programmatically during the 2015-2016 season, the company has revealed to AdExchanger. Prior to the upfronts, the company expected to secure 50% of commitments on a “converged” basis, with elements of both TV and digital in a single deal. In this most recent upfront, NBCUniversal’s digital business grew 50% and, of […]

Programmatic continues to help more than hurt the agency conglomerates, or at least it has for the largest US holding company Omnicom Group. Omnicom continues to see notable growth from its trading desk, although the growth rate has slowed. The company’s Accuen exchange-buying unit delivered an incremental $25 million in spending growth during the third […]

Television may be a little late to the programmatic party, but addressable TV promises to blend performance efficiencies with proven sales lift – and that’s changing the face of the TV buy. Media agencies were historically agents of the upper funnel, but data and technology are redefining the awareness and consideration phase. “A client used […]

“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, COO at Goodway Group. Will the ad-free experience of the future only be available to consumers who pay enough to prevent the ads from being shown? The table is […]

Marketers are known for a near obsession with data – metrics, iteration and ROI – but a string of CMOs at this year’s ANA Masters of Marketing conference avoided the firm ground of data and measurement in favor risk-taking and experiential concerns. “Advertising isn’t dead, but it’s craving courage,” said Arby’s CMO Robert Lynch, pointing to […]

Mobile agency Fetch is in serious growth mode. It’s been just shy of a year since Fetch became part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, which reportedly shelled out around $48 million in November 2014 to buy the London-based agency. Although Fetch still maintains its global headquarters in London, CEO and co-founder James Connelly said that […]

While it has become typical for industry watchers to declare that the mobile web is suffering at the expense of apps’ success, a report Monday revealed consumers use both at almost equal levels. “The New Mobile Mantra,” from WPP’s research unit, Millward Brown Digital, found that of the 30 most-visited mobile properties, browser and app […]

Sony Pictures TV thinks there’s power in remaining subscription-free. In the case of its free streaming premium video network Crackle, which clocks 22 million monthly uniques, it promises brand partners a 93% ad completion rate and an engaged audience. Sony Crackle in April staged its first upfront presentation. “Because we see ourselves as a TV […]

Longtime agency exec Julian Zilberbrand will join Viacom as EVP of Audience Science, the company revealed Friday. His transition comes at a time when Viacom is renewing its emphasis on data to address the slumps in linear TV ad sales and plummeting ratings. Zilberbrand will lead Audience Science, a Viacom unit that manages audience onboarding […]

When most people think about experiential advertising – like sponsoring a music festival or finding a way to showcase Coca-Cola into the Olympics without actually buying an ad – few consider it data-driven. Lucien Boyer, global president and CEO of Havas Sports & Entertainment for the past seven years, has focused exclusively on these unblockable […]

The merger of comScore and Rentrak, announced Tuesday, creates a powerful new player providing unified digital and offline measurement. The deal poses a real challenge to Nielsen, which nevertheless is not about to be overthrown as the reining champ of marketing and media measurement. Pending regulatory approval, comScore will begin to combine its digital audience measurement […]

“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 by Matt Naeger, executive vice president of strategy and analytics for Merkle’s Digital Agency Group. Addressable marketing is not new – we’ve been doing it for many years in the offline world. […]

Google said Monday it will let marketers use their first-party CRM data to target specific users based on hashed email addresses. The product is called Customer Match. While Facebook and Twitter both enable CRM matching, that Google now allows it constitutes “a seminal shift for first-party, addressable targeting,” said Merkle’s EVP of digital strategy, Matt […]