Agencies

As premium game prices skyrocket and paid subscriptions and cloud-based gaming services take off, marketers sense a chance to defray rising costs with ad revenue – perhaps dispelling some doubts about the value of more ads in games.

In the latest sign of massive change among ad agency hold cos, Mark Read is stepping down as leader of WPP. We unpack the impact of AI on agency hold cos and media, including WPP Media’s prediction that 2025 will be the first year in which the majority of ad spend flows through user-generated content.

Dentsu and Criteo announced a strategic partnership to consolidate their respective retail audience data within Dentsu Connect, the agency holding company’s data and identity product.

Open Intelligence is WPP’s Media’s new solution to help advertisers make sense of their data and use it in more ways, with a longer-term goal of decentralizing data.

For proof of the uncertainty facing marketers in 2025, look no further than the industry’s ping-ponging projections for ad spending. WPP Media’s revised forecast is just the most recent example.

Mark Read is exiting WPP at the end of the year; the CEO of DeepMind is important, we swear; Google’s major SEO swings have changed the game.

Sigma, MiQ’s new AI-powered ad platform, gives advertisers better analytics and attempts to unify the fragmented data landscape.

Michael Komasinski, Criteo’s newly-minted CEO, shares his vision for the company – and swears that Criteo doesn’t regret its huge investment in testing the Chrome Privacy Sandbox.

Sports sponsorships can play well for small brands; Perplexity was first to AI search ads, but advertisers waited for Google; and GroupM officially rebrands to WPP Media.

Former Goodway Group CEO Jay Friedman shares hot takes on everything from curation (“absurd”) to brand safety (“botched”).