As a staff reporter at AdExchanger, Alison covers advertising agencies and the digital audio landscape. Previously a copywriter at MarketSmiths, she has written digital marketing copy and produced campaigns across multiple verticals. Prior to that Alison worked in editorial at award-winning travel journalism site Fathom. She has a B.A. in International Studies and Spanish from the University of Michigan.
While industry executives were ogling Alexa-enabled gadgets and 8K roll-up TVs at CES on Tuesday, Martin Sorrell took the stage to talk about the future of the industry and his new holding company, S4. The former WPP CEO, joined on stage by S4’s newly minted board members, MightyHive CEO Pete Kim and MediaMonks CEO Wesley […]
“Alexa, find my consumers.” Brands are trying to crack the code on voice as automated home assistants take root in American homes. Voice is sure to be a big topic again at CES this year, as marketers descend on Las Vegas on Tuesday to learn about the latest trends in consumer technology. While speech recognition […]
About five years ago, marketers eagerly launched pilots across all kinds of emerging technology. Now that their digital businesses are maturing, they’re growing out of that shiny object syndrome and are looking to turn projects into revenue streams. For design innovation agency Fjord, that has shifted the focus with clients from experimental work to consulting […]
Audio remained an exciting area for programmatic advertisers in 2018 as the medium moved further toward automation. The podcast industry began to mature this year as growing audiences garnered attention from radio broadcasters, streaming audio giants and big brands. But a lack of available audience data still hinders programmatic and measurement. Meanwhile, streaming audio and […]
Two years ago, CRM and digital agency MRM//McCann was in a tough place. CEO Michael McLaren stepped down in May 2016, just two months after the agency lost Verizon’s digital account. But things turned around for MRM under global president and COO Kate MacNevin, who led the agency after McLaren’s departure and was promoted in […]
Amazon is losing its iron grip on the increasingly competitive smart speaker market. Amazon’s share will dip below two-thirds for the first time this year to 66.6%, according to a forecast released Thursday by eMarketer. Google will retain 29.5% of the market while other players like Apple, Sonos and Facebook capture the remaining 8.3%. By […]
While B2B marketers commonly rely on white papers and infographics, SAP is starting to embrace branding to stand out amongst consumers. But it can be tough for an enterprise tech company to connect with people in their everyday lives. So, SAP launched a podcast called “Searching for Salai,” a story about Leonardo da Vinci’s fictional […]
The IAB Tech Lab said Tuesday it has launched a compliance program for publishers and platforms that adhere to its podcast measurement guidelines. Podcast hosting service RawVoice/Blubrry and NPR are the first companies to be certified. The program is based on the IAB’s Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines, which were released in December 2017 to provide […]
Toyota needed to put out a wide-reaching message to raise awareness about its hybrid vehicles in Turkey, a market where the concept is new and not widely adopted. To do so, it turned to the broadest reach medium there is: out of home (OOH). But Toyota wanted to introduce some targeting to reach its intended […]
GroupM said Wednesday that Wavemaker global CEO Tim Castree has been named CEO of GroupM North America. Castree does not yet have a successor and will stay on in an advisory role at Wavemaker until a replacement is named. Castree’s big task will be to get GroupM back to growth in North America, its slowest […]
Even before WPP’s restructuring announcement Tuesday, the holding company had already merged digital agency VML with creative agency Young & Rubicam, and digital agency Wunderman with creative agency J. Walter Thompson. It’s still unclear what that means for GroupM’s four large media agencies. WPP CEO Mark Read didn’t comment directly about the media buying arm, […]
The new WPP, as CEO Mark Read called it during a Tuesday morning investor call in London, will return to organic growth by reducing headcount by about 2.5%, consolidating agencies and investing strategically in technology. WPP expects to deliver annual savings of $346 million by the end of 2021 thanks to this strategy. Restructuring costs […]
Media agencies, especially those owned by big holding companies, have always relied on economies of scale to get the best pricing for clients. While scale is still important in a digital world, agencies are finding strategy is a better value proposition for brands trying to make sense of data and technology and apply it to […]
Swedish podcast advertising and distribution platform Acast raised $35 million in a Series C funding round from a group of European investors. The latest round, announced Wednesday, brings the company’s total funding to $67 million. Acast, which operates in eight countries, will use the funds to expand into new and non-English speaking markets and develop […]
After weeks of speculation, S4 Capital said Tuesday it will merge with programmatic agency MightyHive. S4, launched by former WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, will pay $150 million for MightyHive. The agency’s revenues grew 129% at a compound annual growth rate between 2015 and 2017. Revenues for the first nine months of 2018 were $40.7 million, […]
Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital said Monday it is in advanced talks to acquire programmatic marketing agency MightyHive, five months after it paid $350 million for digital production agency MediaMonks. MightyHive is valued at up to $200 million and brings in $25 million in annual revenue, according to Financial Times. Sorrell launched S4 in April after […]
About seven years ago, DSPs that pitched marketers directly risked losing massive agency contracts. But today, as more marketers influence technology decisions and take programmatic contracts in-house, DSPs are freer to go after brands directly. Even The Trade Desk, which built a $6 billion business by pledging its allegiance to agencies, has signed more than […]
GroupM and Magna both released global advertising spend forecasts Monday with very different findings. GroupM lowered its ad spend growth forecast for this year from 4.5% to 4.3%, reaching $543 billion. Magna, which measured 2018 in retrospect, said global ad spend grew by a record 7.2% this year to $552 billion. GroupM revised its 2019 […]
WPP said Monday it will merge digital agency network Wunderman with storied creative agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT), forming a new entity called Wunderman Thompson. Wunderman Thompson will employ 20,000 people in 200 locations across 90 markets, according to Adweek. Wunderman’s newly minted global CEO Mel Edwards will lead the agency, while JWT global CEO […]
After 25 years at BBDO, John Osborn jumped to the media side as the US CEO of OMD last year. He joined the media agency at a time when it was trying to bring content closer to media, and parent Omnicom was encouraging more collaboration among its agencies. “The work we’re doing creatively has to be […]
Radio giant iHeartMedia said Monday it will acquire programmatic radio platform Jelli. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. iHeartMedia has been working with Jelli since 2015 to power its private marketplace, SoundPoint, which represents programmatic inventory on its 850 broadcast radio stations. Jelli also powers Katz Expressway, the independent programmatic marketplace run by radio […]
Martin Sorrell’s self-proclaimed “peanut” of a holding company has officially graduated to a coconut. S4 Capital reported its first-ever earnings as a public company Wednesday, following its reverse takeover of Derriston Capital in April. Q3 revenue grew 45% to $33 million and rose 48% to $94 million for the first nine months of the year. […]
Dentsu Aegis CEO Jerry Buhlmann will step down at the end of the year, after eight years on the job. He will be succeeded by Dentsu Aegis chairman Tim Andree, a former professional basketball player, who has been with the company since 2006 and will combine the chairman and CEO roles. Buhlmann – who will […]
It’s been a tough year for Snap, as its stock tanks and its executive team flees the ship. Despite growing revenue 43% in Q3 to a record $298 million, Snap’s stock hit an all-time low in September of $10 per share. Snapchat is also bleeding daily active users after rolling out an unpopular redesign and facing increasing competition from Instagram. “Snap is struggling to […]
Pandora is making the podcast listening experience better for people and more monetizable for advertisers. The streaming platform revealed the beta version of its Podcast Genome Project, a discovery algorithm that recommends podcast episodes to listeners, based on their habits and searches. The beta will roll out to 1% of Pandora’s user base Tuesday and […]
For Julie DeTraglia, what started as an after-school habit watching re-runs of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “All in the Family” and “The Carol Burnett Show” turned into a career in network and streaming TV. “It didn’t take long for me to understand that Hulu is the perfect place for me to have landed,” […]
Dynamic creative advertising technology is becoming more personalized. Forrester ranked Jivox, RevJet, Thunder, Clinch and Celtra as “leaders” in its first-ever Creative Advertising Technology wave, released Monday. Adform, Flashtalking, Sizmek and Google were ranked “strong performers,” while Adacado was listed as a “contender.” Vendors have tried to marry creative messaging to audience targeting for a […]
Horizon Media wants to be at the forefront as broadcast radio buying becomes more automated and data-driven. On Tuesday, Horizon said it would use programmatic radio platform Jelli for all of its radio upfront planning and buying – typically where advertisers spend at least half of their annual budgets. The media agency, one of the […]
Fifty-year-old direct marketing agency RAPP plays an increasingly relevant role in a world where personalization is key. Rather than expanding beyond its core value prop like some competitors, RAPP is doubling down on its strength of knowing individuals and augmenting that expertise through partnerships. “We’ve always had the customer at the center of everything,” CEO […]
The Hershey Co. is finding cheaper and easier ways to produce content by bringing a team in-house and forging direct relationships with vendors. The iconic brand, which has worked with big creative agencies for years, has built a content team to produce quicker and less expensive videos for social, said Hershey CMO Jill Baskin. “I […]
