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.
Pity the ad tech middleman. They place an ad on behalf of the advertiser, but when it comes time to get paid…they wait. And wait. And wait. In the meantime, they owe their own bills to creditors who want cash now. Since the economic crisis in 2008, marketers have slowed down payments to vendors and […]
Spend on Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen continues to decline as brands increasingly favor disclosed programmatic buying models. Accuen’s Q4 revenue declined by $12 million globally and $17 million in the US year over year. Before Q3, when Accuen’s revenues first began declining YoY, Accuen’s revenue had grown between $18 million and $45 million each quarter […]
Publicis Groupe’s massive transformation is starting to pay off – but the business still has a way to go before its new model is complete. The holding company reported earnings on Thursday with organic growth of 2.2%, reaching $3.2 billion for the quarter. Organic growth for all of 2017 was 0.8%, hitting roughly $12 billion. […]
Snap finally snapped out of its earnings slump on Tuesday as it beat analyst expectations for both revenue and daily active user growth. Revenue in 2017 reached $825 million, a 104% increase from the year before, while 2017 Q4 revenue grew 72% to roughly $286 million, topping analysts’ quarterly estimates of $253 million. “Our business […]
As the first homegrown WPP agency, GroupM’s Mindshare has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. “We were born in Asia when Madison Avenue and the high street of London told us you can’t have a media independent,” said Mindshare’s US CEO, Adam Gerhart. “That provocateur and internal upstart mentality is pervasive in everything we do.” The […]
Champagne brand Moët & Chandon wanted its “Love Unconventional” campaign, running Valentine’s Day through Mother’s Day, to drive engagement with elements of gameplay. While the campaign will be heavy on digital video and influencer content across Facebook and Instagram, its more immersive elements are more endemic to Snapchat’s platform, said Christine Ngo, marketing director and […]
Advertisers want to market using the type of rich data provided by walled gardens – but that’s not possible on the open web. So the major holding companies have each developed data platforms to meet their clients’ needs. The question is: What’s the difference between their offerings? Publicis Groupe’s Spine, IPG’s AMP, WPP’s mPlatform, Dentsu […]
Pandora said Wednesday it would shift resources and savings by investing in ad tech. The music streaming platform, which has fallen behind competitors in developing programmatic advertising solutions for buyers, said it will redeploy staff to build ad tech and mar tech and expand into non-music content. Pandora declined to comment further. Read the release. […]
While most agencies are still trying to wrap their heads around programmatic, digital agency Essence is expanding into the linear world. When it launched as a digital agency in 2005, Essence didn’t bother investing in traditional media, said Global CEO Christian Juhl. Instead, it would wait until traditional media became digitized and the market naturally […]
Just six weeks into her new role as CMO of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Andrea Zahumensky is hitting the market Sunday with her first big campaign launch for the quick-serve restaurant’s new Smoky Mountain BBQ flavor. Zahumensky, who joined KFC from Procter & Gamble, where she was brand director for baby care products in North America, […]
When Wavemaker, the agency born from GroupM’s joining of MEC and Maxus, hired former Publicis exec Oleg Korenfeld last month, it asked him to build a platform to facilitate media planning, buying and strategy across eight major markets. The agency knows that having globally scaled technology is key to its ability to consolidate. Korenfeld is […]
Within the context of Publicis Groupe’s broader restructure, Publicis Media was born to simplify the group’s media offering while leveraging a more modern definition of scale. “Although it’s become so much more complex, media has always been about scale and insight,” said Steve King, CEO of Publicis Media. “We weren’t leveraging that scale effectively.” Publicis […]
Spotify was an early mover in programmatic audio, and it’s taking that momentum into 2018. “Marketers are moving so much money to programmatic. We’ve seen that channel explode,” said Brian Benedik, global head of ads monetization at Spotify. “We’ve seen brands [come to Spotify] that have never invested in audio because we’ve made it programmatic-enabled.” […]
Although GroupM has invested aggressively in programmatic and data-driven marketing technology, Chairman Irwin Gotlieb still adheres to the importance of top funnel marketing. “I believe strongly in a marketing funnel, and that broad targeting will continue to remain an essential part of marketing,” he told AdExchanger. “If I focus my effort on picking the lowest […]
GroupM Chairman Irwin Gotlieb has always had an intuitive eye for technology. He’s been applying it to the CES show floor since the 1970s, when it was called the Comdex computer expo show and disc drives sold for $400,000. Gotlieb began offering his knowledge to clients, vendors and other partners on his legendary floor […]
WPP is embracing the forces of change – both internally and externally. Internally, CEO Sir Martin Sorrell knows WPP’s clients want simplification, which will lead to more consolidation. “We’ve seen it amongst clients and media,” he told AdExchanger. “We’re quite likely to see a similar set of circumstances in the agency business.” And externally, he’s […]
2017 was a busy year of M&A for the digital media and marketing sector, according to reports released by investment banks JEGI and Luma Partners this week. Last year included 2,000 transactions in the sector hitting $272 billion in deal value, according to JEGI. It was the fourth consecutive year of increasing transaction value in […]
Podcast network Wondery is riding high into 2018. Launched in 2016 by former Fox International Channels CEO Hernan Lopez, with backing from 20th Century Fox, Wondery produced its first breakout original hit last fall. “Dirty John,” a true crime mystery created with the LA Times, has been listened to over 15 million times since it […]
The past year was a tough one for agency holding companies. WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, IPG, Dentsu Aegis Network and Havas posted little to no growth in 2017. The agency business has been in flux for years, but 2017 offered the “perfect storm” of challenges that caused growth to stutter, said Greg Paull, principal analyst […]
MAC Cosmetics wanted to increase footfall to its three most important storefronts in Turkey. The makeup brand buys out-of-home (OOH) inventory on mall displays to drive awareness, but it wanted a less static and more measureable way to target shoppers and get them in store, said Tugba Cetegin, marketing manager at MAC Cosmetics in Turkey. […]
Digital ad revenue continues to rise at the expense of traditional media. In the first half of 2017, digital advertising revenue grew 23% to $40 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCooper’s Internet Advertising Revenue report, released Wednesday. Read it. Digital’s growth represents a 22.6% increase from last year, and it’s the largest […]
For agencies, managing and optimizing campaigns across walled gardens is no easy task. Because Facebook, Google, Snap, Twitter and Amazon each have their own ways of defining audiences and processes for optimizing spend, buyers have to launch campaigns multiple times across each of them for every client, without getting consistent insight into what’s working and […]
More marketers are moving programmatic strategy in-house, pushing agencies into an executional role, according to a study released by the Association of National Advertisers on Monday. Most marketers approach in-housing in a hybrid fashion, splitting responsibilities between their internal team and an external agency partner. Marketers increasingly are taking responsibility for strategy while agencies serve […]
Podcast publishers, rejoice: At long last, Apple has released the beta version of its podcast analytics tool. In June, Apple said it would share with podcast publishers aggregate online and offline listening behavior for episodes downloaded through iTunes and its Podcast player app. Previously Apple, which captures over half of all podcast listening, didn’t share […]
It’s a transformational time for Cannes Lions. After industry leaders this year criticized the festival for becoming too bloated, the company announced a set of changes last month to streamline the event and bring the focus back to creativity. Last Friday, Chairman Terry Savage stepped down after leading the festival for more than three decades. […]
We Are Unlimited, the integrated agency Omnicom launched to service the McDonald’s account earlier this year, has hired former iCrossing President Mark Mulhern as its new CEO. In an interview, Mulhern said he was attracted by the opportunity to test a new agency model. “The future of our industry is based on specialisms coming back […]
Radio giant iHeartMedia has had a big first year as a producer and distributor of podcasts – and it’s ready to go deeper into on-demand audio in 2018. Since launching a dedicated podcast section in January, podcast listening has grown 60% on the iHeartRadio app. iHeartMedia is the second-largest podcast network ranked by measurement firm […]
Digital advertising is growing, and big platforms like Google and Facebook continue to reap the profits. That’s the insight from global ad spend forecasts released Sunday by GroupM, Zenith and Magna, which predict the industry will grow between 3.1% and 5.2% this year to as high as $535 billion, as reported by Magna. Advertising growth […]
Meredith Corp’s agreement to acquire Time Inc. for $1.85 billion, announced Sunday, will test whether Meredith’s sales org leadership can benefit from Time’s programmatic technology – and vice versa. In terms of ad sales, it’s a tale of two different strategies. Time Inc. struggled in the wake of a chaotic sales reorg that caused ad […]
Agencies are dying? Don’t tell that to Rob Norman, chief digital officer and veteran of WPP’s GroupM, who said Monday he will step down from his full-time role to become a part-time adviser for the company. But even if agencies aren’t having a near-death experience, they should behave like they are, Norman said: “If you […]
