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.
Despite the wide rollout of its Premium subscription product in April, Pandora is still betting on ads for revenue. Now that Premium has hit the market, Pandora can refocus its efforts and resources on launching new ad products, including programmatic audio, in the back half of the year, said CEO and founder Tim Westergren on […]
All marketers want to personalize their messaging, but not every marketer can do it, especially without the resources to dictate who gets what message and when. That was one of the issues faced by GE-owned ServiceMax before it beta tested Demandbase’s Site Optimization tool. ServiceMax develops field service software for clients as diverse as Siemens, […]
WPP cut its growth target for this year from 3% to 2%, citing a tepid economy and lack of new business wins, the company said on its Q1 earnings call on Thursday. Q1 organic growth came in below expectations at 0.8%. WPP is feeling the pricing pressure from CPGs as they struggle to compete with […]
Procter & Gamble will slash $1.5 billion from its marketing budget over the next five years, the CPG giant said during its Q1 earnings call Wednesday. At least $1 billion will come from media, specifically by lowering rates and getting rid of supply chain waste, said Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller. P&G wants to save […]
While the big story from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) 2016 digital ad revenue report is that mobile accounted for over half of digital ad spend, digital audio spend was finally significant enough to merit its own category. The biannual report, released Wednesday, shows digital audio spend hit $1.1 billion in 2016, “passing the threshold […]
MGM Resorts International needed to revamp its go-to-market strategy. The hospitality company, which owns hotels along the Las Vegas Strip such as the Bellagio, MGM Grand, The Mirage and Mandalay Bay, as well as properties across the globe, was operating competing media plans for each hotel brand. “We’ve always gone to market as individual resorts,” […]
When Dentsu Aegis Network acquired performance agency Merkle last year, it gained deep expertise in data-driven marketing as well as a data hub for its agency brands. That hub is called M1, Merkle’s data and media planning tool launched last year. M1 can pull in an advertiser’s data and match it to personally identifiable information […]
On IPG’s Q1 2017 earnings call Friday, CEO Michael Roth echoed past statements that he doesn’t see management consultancies as a threat, despite their encroachment onto agency turf. “There is a great deal being written about the convergence that is bringing adjacent industries into each other’s orbit,” he said. “The increased competition that we all read […]
Accenture, which has crept steadily onto holding company turf in recent years, has tapped Universal McCann, part of IPG, as its global media agency of record. WPP’s MEC was the incumbent. UM will handle cross-channel media buying across all lines of business at Accenture, including its agency brand, Accenture Interactive. Programmatic buys for Accenture will […]
Growth at Accuen was flat last quarter as more clients moved away from nondisclosed programmatic buying methods, where agencies procure inventory and resell it to clients with an unrevealed markup, said Omnicom CEO John Wren on the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “A lot of clients have shifted to wanting these services on a […]
Burger King’s stunt to activate Google’s Home device with a 15-second TV spot is the first deliberate attempt by a brand to tie paid media with voice-activated search, raising questions about how brands should approach advertising on smart home devices. On Wednesday, the quick-serve restaurant ran a commercial in which an employee asks, “Okay, Google, […]
Within a year of its launch, Omnicom Media Group’s (OMG) third agency, Hearts & Science, was running two of the world’s largest media accounts. This feat is made more impressive in that when OMG pitched for one of those accounts, Procter & Gamble, Hearts & Science didn’t even exist. “We had to hire 300 people […]
Broadcast networks Turner, Fox and Viacom have chosen Accenture to host and verify OpenAP, an audience platform that standardizes segments and measurement across their networks, the companies announced at a Friday event in New York City. When the three networks first announced OpenAP in March, they were adamant about backing it up with third-party measurement […]
The agency-client relationship is ailing, and fixing what’s broken will involve deep organizational changes on both sides of the table – starting with the marketer. “The brand has to start with itself,” said Brigitte Majewski, Forrester analyst and author of a report released Thursday calling for a new agency operating model. “If you aren’t asking […]
There’s a “simultaneous frustration” on the buy and sell sides to move beyond legacy TV currency standards like C3 ratings, said Linda Yaccarino, chairwoman of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCU, at the 4As Transformation show in Los Angeles on Tuesday. This upfront season, NBCU is asking buyers to rethink the way they approach […]
Trading desk CEOs want to change the narrative around programmatic to one of quality rather than cost efficiency. For Amnet co-CEO Art Muldoon, who joined Dentsu Aegis Network when it acquired his programmatic shop, Accordant Media, in August, the ability to tap into a network of creative and data assets helps push that narrative to […]
The Weather Co.’s recently appointed chief revenue officer, Carrie Seifer, will oversee more than media sales in her new role. Responsible for B2B and B2C sales efforts across The Weather Co.’s properties, Seifer will tap Weather’s robust location and weather data sets to help clients streamline business processes like supply chain logistics. Parent company IBM’s […]
Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard continued his rallying cry for a cleaner and more transparent advertising ecosystem Tuesday at the 4As Transformation show in Los Angeles. This time, he called for simplicity in the agency business, which has become increasingly fragmented as shops pop up to service every channel, platform and digital […]
Amanda Richman, president of activation and investment at Publicis Groupe’s Starcom, used to mostly negotiate rates with TV networks. Today, she helps clients navigate spend on walled gardens, vet ad tech partners and use data to make smarter media buys. “There’s a deep relationship with investment in media inventory and investment from a tech and […]
IPONWEB might have made its name building ad tech for other vendors, but it’s increasingly hoping to directly service agencies, brands and publishers. An expanding 35% of IPONWEB’s business comes directly from media buyers and owners, and in late February, the company brought on Rubicon Project and Spotify vet Jana Jakovljevic to build out its […]
T.O by Lipton, Unilever’s Keurig-like tea brewer in France, was struggling to turn analytics from its ecommerce platform into actionable insights. “With [tools like] Google Analytics, I could know what consumers were doing, but I had difficulty knowing why they were dropping off or why they weren’t buying our machines,” said Mathieu Bernard, ecommerce lead […]
Both Publicis Groupe’s Zenith and IPG’s Magna attribute growth in online advertising to programmatic targeting and data in their global ad spend forecasts released this week. That momentum will help digital ad spend overtake TV this year for the first time. Magna pegged overall ad spend at $187 billion this year, a 3.7% increase over […]
Media agency employees sitting for Facebook’s Blueprint certification exam may have flashbacks of their experiences taking the SATs. The exam, which certifies agency employees on every Facebook native ad product within its Ads Manager, Business Manager and Power Editor tools, is a multiple-hour affair that requires weeks of prep. Test-takers must roll up their sleeves […]
By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]
Spotify revealed Monday it had acquired content recommendation engine MightyTV to further personalize its ad delivery capabilities. Read the release. MightyTV founder and CEO Brian Adams will join Spotify as VP of technology. His eight employees will also join, and MightyTV will cease to exist as its own brand. Spotify declined to share the terms […]
Digital agencies aren’t shrugging off management consultancies as competition anymore. Some are even promoting their consulting chops as they compete in an increasingly crowded market. “Until this year, traditional agencies had their heads in the sand about the threat management consultancies were bringing to the market,” said Jay Wilson, director at Gartner and author of […]
Cadreon’s global president Arun Kumar has become IPG Mediabrands’ first-ever chief data and marketing technology officer. In addition to overseeing all data, technology and analytics assets within Mediabrands, he will still head up Cadreon. Among Kumar’s top priorities is scaling IPG Mediabrands’ data stack across the unit and IPG at large. “We’ve gotten pretty good […]
While major change-management consultancies like Deloitte, Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have acquired creative and digital design agencies to get closer to the CMO, they’ve haven’t purchased any media-buying agencies. But as these consulting firms move deeper into the digital marketing arena, they’re building media-buying services as well. Here’s how Deloitte, Accenture and PwC are stirring […]
Dentsu Aegis Network’s Isobar sits on the blurring continuum between agency and consultancy. Launched in 2000 under the name Roundarch as a joint venture between WPP, Deloitte and BroadVision, Isobar used to compete with the “who’s who list of digital agencies,” said co-CEO Jeff Maling. But when WPP and Deloitte exited the investment and Aegis […]
Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]
