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.
It’s relatively easy to know if you have a diverse workforce – you just need to look. Supporting diversity across your entire media supply chain is trickier. Procurement teams often evaluate vendors based on pricing or value, and rely on recommendations from colleagues and industry peers – making it difficult for diverse-owned companies to […]
Holding companies are being bludgeoned by the pandemic, and IPG is no exception. Organic revenue decreased 9.9% in the quarter to $1.85 billion as clients cut back spend in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company said during its Q2 earnings call Wednesday. IPG suffered declines in every major region, including the United States (-8%), […]
After experiencing a slowdown in Q1, ad spend began to rebound at Spotify in June as some markets exited pandemic lockdowns, the company said Wednesday on its Q2 earnings call. Ad spend in April and May were down 25% before inching up to a 10% decline in June. For the quarter, ad-supported revenue increased 11% […]
The United States ad market has proven more resilient than anticipated thanks to record political ad spending in the run-up to the 2020 election. Still, US ad spend will decrease 7% this year to $236 billion due to the impacts of COVID-19, according to Zenith’s global ad spend forecast, released on Monday. Without political ad […]
Omnicom mitigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on its business in part by cutting 6,100 jobs across its network in the second quarter, the company said Tuesday during its earnings call. Omnicom also froze hiring, eliminated salary increases, implemented voluntary pay cuts across its agencies and participated in government subsidy programs in 35 markets. […]
Relatively speaking, business started to look up for American Airlines, the company said during its Q2 earnings call Thursday. But don’t expect it to last. As the COVID-19 pandemic obliterated air travel in April, American Airlines burned nearly $100 million per day. With demand rebounding slightly in June, cash burn inched up closer to $30 […]
King Arthur Baking Company is in the rare position of being more relevant than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company, which rebranded from King Arthur Flour this week after 230 years, has been a staple in bread bakers’ pantries for decades. This spring, it gained prominence as bread baking became a popular pastime during […]
Publicis Groupe, after years of struggling in North America, was on its way back to positive performance at the beginning of Q2. Then COVID-19 hit, and organic growth declined 6.8% for the quarter and 3.3% for the first half of the year. “We were really off to a good 2020,” CEO Arthur Sadoun said on […]
Media buyers often have a tough time finding diverse or minority-owned media companies on major supply-side platforms (SSPs), because those publishers often lack the resources or scale to set up programmatic sales. So diverse or minority-owned publishers get left out of the programmatic opportunity. Programmatic services firm Huddled Masses set out to fix that problem […]
After acquiring 10 agencies in the last four years (and seven in the last two), marketing services firm LRW Group is rebranding to Material. Material’s acquisition spree began in 2015, with funding from private equity firm Tailwind Capital. Its purchases include full-service agency T3, customer service agency Strativity and market research firm Kelton. CEO Dave […]
Digital agency Jellyfish is sticking with its plans to expand globally, COVID be damned. That agenda was, after all, why it was acquired by the French holding company Fimalac in February. “We don’t want to necessarily exploit the fact that there’s a global pandemic,” said CEO Rob Pierre, “but we certainly think that there’s […]
Many brands quickly pulled out-of-home (OOH) campaigns when the country went into lockdown in March. After all, nobody would be outside to see them. That claw back sent OOH prices plummeting across the market. And now that parts of the country are open again, OOH is a steal. In May, direct-to-consumer men’s grooming brand Manscaped […]
Consumers aren’t ready to jet around the world, but they’re getting more comfortable with domestic travel. That’s the verdict from Delta Airline’s earnings this week, which showed “a small but welcome uptick in passenger volume” in Q2, said CEO Ed Bastian on the earnings call. The activity is “being driven almost entirely by domestic leisure […]
Media agencies are the No. 1 partner that brands are reviewing as COVID-19 rocks their marketing plans. Sixty-three percent of brands are reevaluating their media agencies, according to AdExchanger’s 2020 industry outlook report. That’s compared to 56% of respondents reassessing their data partners, 44% looking at new measurement partners and just 19% reexamining their relationships […]
Marketers have historically siloed their known customers from their digital audiences, but that separation prevents brands from reaching consumers throughout their journey. To bridge that gap, IPG-owned Acxiom on Wednesday launched ConneCXions, a suite of solutions and software applications that helps marketers deploy consistent audience definitions, based on Acxiom’s first-party ID graph, across direct and […]
Tubi has been shouting from the rooftops about ad-supported streaming for years, and the market is finally listening. “It’s pretty much understood that [brands] need to match their budgets to where the eyeballs are,” said Tubi’s chief revenue officer Mark Rotblat. But brands aren’t the only ones taking notice of the growing AVOD opportunity. Fox […]
It never ends. COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns of varying degrees in states such as Texas, Florida, Arizona and California mean advertisers must once again adapt their strategies. After pausing media spend in March and April, advertisers tentatively returned in late May. But the rise of coronavirus cases in more than 30 states means they’re accelerating […]
As TV networks launch or acquire ad-supported streaming services (AVOD), they have a big opportunity to reinvent the broken ad experience for both viewers and media buyers. And while these networks have the opportunity to bring their AVOD learnings back to linear, the OTT networks can also learn a lesson or two from the linear […]
Nielsen is caught in the middle of a dispute between TV buyers and sellers about whether to include out-of-home (OOH) viewing as part of its linear TV ratings stream this year. The measurement company initially planned to integrate viewing that takes place at bars, restaurants and other public establishments as part of its national […]
The dent COVID-19 put in podcast advertising hasn’t stopped the market from growing. Revenues in the podcast advertising market are projected to grow 14.7% year over year to nearly $1 billion in 2020, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCooper’s full year podcast ad revenue study, released Monday. IAB surveyed 19 podcast publishers and ad networks […]
Consolidation has opened up better measurement solutions in podcasting – and big brands are jumping in. On Wednesday, Omnicom said it will invest $20 million upfront into podcasts on Spotify in the second half of 2020, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The deal also gives Omnicom access to exclusive and original content globally and […]
Havas Media and GroupM each launched curated media marketplaces representing black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ and other minority-owned publishers, as well as publishers that create content specifically for underrepresented communities. Havas Media’s social equity private marketplace, which went live last Friday, represents roughly 250 publishers with minority and LGBTQ+ owners, including Blavity, MadameNoire and Black Enterprise. Moen […]
Ad supported video on demand (AVOD) is growing, with more content – for instance, NBCUniversal’s Peacock launches this summer – as well as more viewers. Forty-five percent of people who regularly watch online video tune into ad-supported services, according to the IAB. Still, AVOD isn’t ubiquitous yet, so who can advertisers actually reach today? […]
Supply-path optimization (SPO) has become a selling point for agencies looking to bring value and savings to clients in programmatic. An SPO strategy allows buyers to cut out players in the programmatic supply chain that don’t add value, such as resellers or exchanges that sell only duplicative inventory, while simultaneously funneling more spend toward exchanges […]
The past week has seen a reckoning begin over the content policies – or lack thereof – governing the big media platforms. Major marketers, including Coca-Cola, Unilever and Diageo, are halting spend on social media at least through July. But there’s always the danger than these efforts end up being an exercise in virtue signaling once they’re […]
The holding company MDC Partners was already struggling before COVID-19 decimated the US economy. But a proposed merger by Stagwell Group, first reported by AdAge late Thursday, demonstrates how the pandemic likely accelerated the end of MDC’s run as an independent public company. MDC Partners and Stagwell Group did not respond to requests for […]
The ad market will pay for the United States government’s late lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to GroupM’s midyear global ad spend forecast. The US advertising market will shrink 9.9% this year to $207.3 billion, excluding political ad spend, which will buoy the market by $15 billion in 2020, according to […]
Brands are getting involved as civil rights and activist groups pressure Facebook to stop the spread of misinformation and hate on its platform. Last week, REI, The North Face and Patagonia said they would suspend their ad spend on the platform for the month of July as part of the Stop Hate For Profit campaign, […]
Even Google can’t avoid the vicious impact of COVID-19 on the ad industry. The ad giant’s net US digital ad revenue will decline by 5.3% this year to $39.6 billion, according to eMarketer, even as it projects the digital ad market as a whole to grow 1.7% to $134.7 billion. As a result, […]
Slack, which has become an increasingly relevant way for colleagues to communicate while working remotely, wanted to release a branding message as use of its product surges during the pandemic. But like other brands in market right now, it had to create that message while physical production is on pause. So Slack’s marketing team set […]
