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.
If Spotify’s third quarter earnings are any indicator, programmatic audio is taking off with buyers. The digital audio platform told investors on Thursday that 20%-25% of its revenue comes from its self-serve programmatic platform and other automated buying features. That’s up from 18% in February, when the company went public. The market is moving aggressively […]
As more people use smart speakers, publishers are establishing their own voice. News organization Al Jazeera is exploring how to position its brand on voice, which it believes will be the gateway to an internet-of-things-driven world, said Michael Weaver, SVP of business development and growth at Al Jazeera Network. “Voice assistants are the first entry […]
With every successful direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand launch, a tiny bite is taken out of a legacy brand’s market share. Once those bites start adding up, DTC brands can become a major threat to business, said Clorox CMO Eric Reynolds at the ANA Masters of Marketing last week. “[DTC brands] are very nimble and capable competitors,” […]
After years of banging the drum about gaining more control, transparency and efficiencies from service providers, marketers are doing it themselves. Cost and speed to market are necessities for marketers struggling to drive growth, but too many third-party relationships often slow things down. “Our current situation is unproductive, unsustainable, undesirable and untenable,” ANA CEO Bob […]
Human resources service provider TriNet launched its first-ever omnichannel brand campaign in October – without the help of an advertising agency. While the company worked with DWA as its media agency and Bombora, The Trade Desk and Nativo as ad tech partners, it was on a tight deadline to reposition the brand without an agency […]
Consumer health and pharmaceutical giant Bayer is taking programmatic in-house. Bayer will partner with MightyHive to in-source its digital and programmatic media planning, buying, execution, strategy and analytics as well as search over the next two years. MightyHive will handle execution for the first year and phase out during 2020, Josh Palau, VP of digital […]
Audio ads should be personalized, too. That’s the thought behind Adobe’s partnership with A Million Ads, which powers dynamic creative optimization in digital and programmatic audio, announced Monday. Adobe launched programmatic audio capabilities in July 2017, after receiving an uptick in demand from its customer base, said Justin Merickel, VP of media optimizer at Adobe […]
After stagnant growth in 2017, holding companies are getting rid of assets that aren’t related to their core focus on digital transformation, programmatic, data and technology. Omnicom, Publicis Groupe and WPP have significantly pruned their portfolios this quarter. IPG and Havas, on the other hand, have disposed of smaller and less strategic agencies in the […]
IPG’s $2.3 billion acquisition of Acxiom Marketing Solutions will transform the holding company’s services around its clients first-party data, said CEO Michael Roth said on the company’s Q3 earnings call Friday. “Acxiom is a world-class data asset,” he said. “As all companies look to make their first-party data work harder for them, and do so […]
Publicis Groupe will divest part of its health care unit, Publicis Health Services (PHS), to restore its balance sheet and focus on the strategic growth areas of its business, the company announced Thursday. PHS, which services contract sales organizations and doesn’t exist in other health care communications networks, has been a drag on the overall […]
Martin Sorrell is bullish on Amazon. The platform will eventually reach $100 billion in ad spend, Sorrell, the CEO of S4 Capital and former WPP honcho, predicted Tuesday at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO in New York City. He did not mention a timeline. In Amazon’s Q3 earnings in July, the company said it brought in $2.5 […]
Programmatic dollars flowing to video and mobile have finally surpassed spend on desktop and banner ads. This year, mobile made up 53% of global programmatic spend by device, while video ads accounted for 51% of programmatic spend by format, according to Magna’s Programmatic 2018 report. (Magna did not include video inventory on over-the-top devices in […]
As marketer concerns about brand safety, transparency and data ownership continue to grow, so do their investments in programmatic guaranteed deals and private marketplaces (PMPs). By 2020, four out of every five programmatic dollars in the United States will flow to PMPs or guaranteed deals, according to eMarketer’s latest programmatic forecast released Friday. Brand safety […]
Brian Wiener will present on video measurement at AdExchanger’s upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16. ComScore is getting back on its feet. After the Nasdaq delisted the company due to a string of financial foibles and leadership changes, the measurement company brought on former 360i Chairman Bryan Wiener as CEO in April. By May, […]
Because WordPress hosts numerous blogs and websites – it claims to power 31% of the internet – it has a tough time scaling its ability to police brand safety. While brands can often find their audiences on WordPress domains, they can also find themselves next to unsavory content. So WordPress, which runs an exchange called […]
As the largest digital audio platform in the US, Pandora is determined to capture a fair share of the burgeoning podcast market. The digital audio platform, which received a $3.5 billion acquisition offer last month from SiriusXM, has been hard at work fixing podcasting’s discovery problem with its Podcast Genome Project. Like it does for music, […]
This is the latest installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. When Anneka Gupta joined LiveRamp as her first job out of college, she didn’t foresee that she’d be co-CEO seven years later. In fact, she didn’t even know if she wanted to be a […]
Why is the industry still talking about linear vs. digital when to consumers, it’s all just content? That’s the question Donna Speciale, president of ad sales at Turner, is asking to galvanize long-awaited changes to how network TV transacts media. “At some point, we’re not going to say linear or digital,” she told AdExchanger. “We’ll […]
W Hotels turned to a new kind of cultural language to publicize its Wake Up Call music festival last month: the GIF. The Marriott-owned brand teamed up with Giphy for both the pre-campaign awareness push and an on-site activation for the festival, which W launched in 2016 and plans to roll out globally this year. […]
One month on the job, WPP CEO Mark Read is making big changes at the holding company. WPP will combine digital agency VML and 100-year-old ad agency Young & Rubicam into a new agency named VMLY&R, the group announced Wednesday. WPP tapped Jon Cook, VML’s CEO since 2011, to lead the company and its 7,000 […]
AT&T’s promise to connect data, technology, distribution and content to make advertising better for all constituents is exciting. So exciting, in fact, that industry executives from both the buy and sell sides gathered in support of the idea at the Relevance conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., this week, willing to help make it happen. But […]
Two multibillion-dollar acquisitions and one Justice Department lawsuit later, AT&T’s advertising and analytics unit finally has a name: Xandr. AT&T revealed the brand at its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., Tuesday, a debutante ball for the new unit that gathered 300 top advertising and media executives at the lavish Ritz-Carlton Bacara. The name pays […]
As the traditional holding company model declines, new models are rising as competition. While the “big six” – WPP, Publicis Groupe, IPG, Dentsu Aegis, Havas and Omnicom – still rule, legacy structures and poor financial performance are causing their dominance to wane. In March, WPP lost $2.6 billion from its market cap. Omnicom has been […]
Advertisers are moving over the top. Over-the-top TV (OTT) ad spend will grow 40% to reach $2 billion this year, according to Magna’s US Ad Spend Forecast Fall 2018, released Thursday. And addressable TV campaigns will reach $800 million in 2018. The uptick in OTT investment is driven by consumer adoption of smart TVs and […]
Media agencies once used their buying power to compete with each other. But as clients transform their marketing processes for a digital world, clout doesn’t have the cache it once did, according to Forrester’s first Global Media Agency Wave Q3 2018, which was released Monday. “In a programmatic environment, buying clout becomes less important,” said […]
Wunderman global CEO Mel Edwards has big shoes to fill. Last Thursday, the CRM and digital agency said it would replace CEO Mark Read, recently named CEO of WPP, with Edwards, who previously led the agency in EMEA. Read is credited with turning Wunderman around from a legacy direct marketing company into a digital powerhouse. […]
Panoply, the podcast network and technology company born from The Slate Group, is cutting ties with its editorial and direct sales business to focus on building podcast technology. The group has a podcast ad server called Megaphone, used by over 1,500 publishers, that dynamically inserts ads into shows. Last year, Panoply launched Megaphone Targeted Marketplace […]
MDC CEO and Chairman Scott Kauffman will step down from the holding company. Kauffman will remain CEO and retain his board seat until the company finds a replacement, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news Wednesday. But MDC has been in decline for a while. It lost half its stock value […]
Martin Sorrell took a page out of his own playbook when he launched his new holding company, S4 Capital, in April. S4 released a 191-page prospectus Tuesday detailing its financials, share structure and go-to-market strategy. If all goes as planned, the company will begin trading on the London Stock Exchange on Sept. 28. But Sorrell’s […]
Independent media agency Mediasmith has a new owner – but clients might not notice. The San Francisco-based agency, launched in 1978 by David Smith and Karen McFee, has sold to four members of its management team. COO John Cate, SVP and media director Greg Pomaro, VP of insights and technology Marcus Pratt and finance director […]
