Agencies

The Association of National Advertisers has distanced itself from comments former Mediacom CEO Jon Mandel made onstage at its Media Leadership conference last week. In his presentation, Mandel alleged that the practice of rebates or “kickbacks” demanded by agencies from media suppliers and tech partners – common overseas – has in recent years become widespread […]

Razorfish Global is updating its media strategy. Or, more specifically, it’s complementing its expertise in customer experience design and commerce with media. “Historically, the organization has gone after standalone media RFPs,” said Razorfish Global Chief Strategy Officer Scott Sorokin. “We can’t win against a media company. We have to pivot around technology and experiences – […]

Agencies are not transparent about their actions. Agencies recommend media that is off-strategy when it works for their gain. Agencies accrue media earned by advertisers’ spending and resell it to other advertisers. Agencies demand pay-for-play from vendors in order to be recommended, and cross the line in partnership relationships. These are among the claims made […]

Global CEO Matt Seiler will exit IPG Mediabrands by the end of the year. During his four years at the helm of the media agency, Seiler led a push to align agency compensation more closely with client outcomes. While his efforts in that area met with limited success, he found more traction with an initiative […]

MEC North America’s digital president Shenan Reed is discussing the way her media agency communicates with its sisters in GroupM (“We’re all one big stock ticker symbol and it’s to nobody’s advantage to be competitive with each other”) when her Ringly vibrates. That’s the connected piece of jewelry that perks up when someone receives a call […]

iSocket’s former CTO, Karl Bunch, will help focus Xaxis’ discipline around its demand-side products. Bunch, an ad tech vet who also worked at Time Warner Music, CPXi and AppNexus, started as Xaxis’ VP of global product development last week. The WPP-owned programmatic media company revealed the hire Tuesday. Bunch’s immediate prerogative is learning Xaxis’ business and […]

Creativity on mobile – or the lack thereof – was top of mind at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. “The notion that creativity hasn’t been cracked on mobile – I find that depressing,” said Lindsay Pattison, CEO of Maxus Worldwide, speaking at an IAB event sponsored by Facebook and NASDAQ during the big show. “Most clients […]

Digital measurement company comScore needed WPP’s investment in order to rival Nielsen in cross-platform ratings, according to one comScore partner. Although Nielsen dominates linear TV measurement, its push toward a “Total Audience” rating will improve its mobile Online Campaign Ratings tool, launched last summer. ComScore, in lockstep, rolled out a cross-platform tool in January to […]

Depending on how you frame it, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest are either disintermediating the influencer marketing ecosystem or “wrapping their arms more tightly around it,” as Lisa Weinstein, president of global digital, data and analytics at Starcom MediaVest Group, puts it. Circa 2011, brands threw money at social marketing agencies with one goal: “Go […]

IPG Mediabrands’ media investment arm, MAGNA Global, has added 15 long-tail and premium TV networks to its consortium mix. The long-term goal is to automate more than 50% of client buys. MAGNA Consortium’s original slate of partners included print, digital and TV publishers like Clear Channel Media and Entertainment, Tribune, AOL, Cablevision and A+E Networks. […]

The divide between publishers and advertisers around viewability sharpened during a Tuesday morning panel “Inside The Mind Of The Advertiser,” hosted by analytics provider Integral Ad Science. This wasn’t much of a surprise considering one panelist was Ari Bluman, GroupM’s chief digital investment officer for North America. GroupM has taken a notoriously hardline stance around […]

With the revamp of its partner program last week, Facebook is for the first time allowing agencies to pursue certification – under a specialization called Media Buying. (Don’t call it a badge.) The change is a tacit acknowledgement that Facebook’s key relationships in the ad ecosystem include not only the builders of tools for reaching […]

MDC Partners had a record-high number of client wins in 2014, includeing Diageo’s Johnnie Walker, Unilever’s Magnum Ice Cream and InBev’s Corona in Brazil. As a result, its Q4 revenue increased 17.5% YoY (from $289.2 million to $339.9 million). Organic revenue also increased $12.5%, with new business wins totaling $56.7 million. FY 2014 revenue increased […]

One hundred percent desktop ad viewability sounds like the simplest thing and an easy standard to meet. But advertisers still are in want, publishers wish they could provide it and this demand has generated frothy press releases from the ad tech community with “100% viewable” bolded in the header. The problem is that “100% viewable” […]

During Interpublic Group’s (IPG) Q4 and year-end earnings call on Friday, chief Michael Roth emphasized – as he did after Q3 – the holding company’s barter-based programmatic model that discloses margins. This isn’t the only difference from the black-box models of IPG’s competitors, which deploy programmatic on an agency-by-agency basis. “We continue to believe that […]

A global consumer packaged-goods giant and specialty automotive company have very different digital aspirations. For toothpaste brand Colgate-Palmolive Co., its target demographic is everyone. “How many teeth exist in the world?” said Jack Haber, VP of global advertising and digital for Colgate-Palmolive Co., during Simulmedia’s Salon series panel event Thursday with MediaLink. “For some brands, […]

WPP Group’s data management investment division Kantar entered Thursday into a strategic deal globally with online measurement mainstay comScore, which could give it up to 20% equity stake in the company — if all shakes out as planned. Read the full release. Through the deal, comScore will issue about 5% of its shares in exchange for […]

Five months after taking the wraps off its revamped ad management product, Facebook is slowly but steadily chalking up new Atlas customers. In the wake of its splashy deals with Omnicom Group and Havas, the company has unveiled agreements with database marketer Merkle and Mediaocean, the dominant provider of RFP and workflow management software geared […]

Programmatic activities contributed $20 million in incremental revenue to Omnicom Group’s top line in Q4 2014, suggesting the machine-driven media buying trend continues to drive growth in agency land. For full-year 2014, the holding company’s programmatic revenues were around $140 million, CFO Philip Angelastro told investors during the company’s earnings call. That’s about 1% of […]

What is digital video going to look like in 2015? Representatives from all sides talked it out at Industry Preview 2015 in a panel discussion led by Rich Greenfield, Media & Tech Analyst at BTIG & Angel Investor. Participants included: Pooja Midha, Senior VP, Digital Ad Sales & Operations, Disney ABC TV Group Dave Morgan, CEO […]

“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. Measuring the viewability of ads is now a reality that’s not going away. The intent behind this is good and the reason why we should […]

“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 Peter Vandre, senior vice president and digital analytics practice leader at Merkle. I have a confession. As a marketing analytics professional, I’ve bashed the likes of Facebook and Google for […]

With all the recent talk about automating the ad-buying process, it’s easy to forget about content. But Drew Panayiotou, president and CEO of BBDO’s Atlanta division, thinks agencies will sink or swim depending on their ability to produce the “next generation of content.” “Content is dramatically changing as media is changing,” Panayiotou told AdExchanger. Panayiotou […]

Publishers love to wall off their audience data, but is that good for marketers, who need to track consumer activity across devices and various sites and apps? Certainly messaging across channels is more precise when the targeting mechanisms are based on, say, Facebook login data instead of cookies. But what happens when a marketing campaign needs […]

Privacy compliance consumes more attention in agency-land thanks to the rise of data collection, the proliferation of vendors that support it and new catchphrases like “people-based marketing,” which was coined by Facebook a few months back. GroupM has created a new position to centralize its institutional knowledge and activities regarding privacy, and it has hired Rachel […]

Financially troubled British grocer Tesco confirmed rumors it intends to offload its data marketing and analysis division, dunnhumby. In documents released Thursday, Tesco said it has appointed Goldman Sachs as its adviser to explore “strategic options” for the US$756 million business as it embarks on a complete overhaul of its assets. It’s hard to bucket […]

“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 Megan Pagliuca, vice president and general manager for digital media at Merkle Inc. The marketers that are truly taking digital media in-house are few and far between. Those that are successful […]

A new report from Interpublic Group’s MAGNA Global media research and buying arm reinforces earlier predictions that consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands would invest as much as $7 billion in digital advertising by 2018. According to MAGNA’s 2015 Global Advertising Revenue Forecast, released Monday, verticals like CPG and pharmaceuticals, which once invested more heavily in […]

As more advertising happens programmatically, it’s increasingly difficult to blend automation and creative design. And though Brooklyn-based digital agency Huge doesn’t buy media, it feels the influence of automation in advertising and doesn’t necessarily feel it’s for the better, at least from a creative standpoint. With roughly 1,000 employees, Huge operates offices in Atlanta, Washington, […]

There’s no doubting the ad server’s importance in managing digital media. “It is the central hub for all digital placements, and provides advanced reporting on things like reach & frequency, multi-touch attribution, geo-targeting, time to conversion analyses, and overall media effectiveness,” IPG Mediabrands’ Mitchell Weinstein told AdExchanger. But how important is it for companies to own their […]