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.
After a six-month sabbatical, Chief Revenue Officer Laura Desmond will leave Publicis Groupe due to a family health emergency, the company announced Thursday. (Press release) Desmond’s term with the organization will end on Dec. 31. Rishad Tobaccowala, the holding company’s chief strategy and growth officer who performed Desmond’s responsibilities during the sabbatical, will continue executing […]
Workflow management software provider Mediaocean will integrate with four demand-side platforms (DSPs) to automate programmatic account management and billing for its agency partners, the company announced Wednesday. The program, announced at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in New York City and called Connect Programmatic, launches with DSPs TubeMogul, The Trade Desk, Rocket Fuel and MediaMath on […]
In lieu of a quarterly earnings call, Pandora invited investors to Terra Gallery in San Francisco on Tuesday for an in-depth discussion of its new product suite, developed to breathe life back into its struggling platform. Pandora, which has long monetized on in-stream audio and display ads, now faces a multiplying set of competitors that has […]
For a CMO, convincing the CEO or CRO to put more money toward marketing is a tall order. Because it’s difficult for marketing to prove ROI, large organizations often squeeze the budget. That’s changing. When Denise Karkos became CMO of TD Ameritrade, she told her board upfront that she planned to invest in data, analytics […]
The ability to buy directly from a publisher, both programmatically and through direct integrations, is transforming agency media-buying practices. Premium inventory is going programmatic thanks to private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic guaranteed deals. Meanwhile, header technology has reinvented the way buyers connect with some media sellers. These converging trends have empowered more agencies to go […]
Johnson & Johnson saw the writing on the wall when it began marketing in a digital world. The 130-year-old CPG giant was born and raised in what Alison Lewis, CMO of J&J Consumer Brands, called a “right-handed world.” “We were dominated by brick-and-mortar, Mom was the CEO of the household, big players used size and […]
Less than a year old, Hearts & Science, Omnicom Group’s data-driven, integrated agency, has grabbed major accounts from rival holding companies. With Procter & Gamble and AT&T, the agency gained the two largest media accounts in the world within the first four months of its existence. Now Hearts & Science is starting to expand internationally, with […]
Ever since Publicis Groupe disaggregated its trading desk, VivaKi, programmatic has been searching for a new home within the holding company. DigitasLBi is taking an integrated approach by embedding programmatic experts into account teams. “I’m not looking to create a long-term programmatic team silo,” said Carol Chung, who became head of programmatic, North America, at […]
As WPP’s direct marketing agency, Wunderman began collecting data about individual consumers before it was the currency of the digital world. “Data was the lifeline of this place to begin with,” said Wunderman’s New York president, Jamie Gallo. “It was very pedestrian and primal data, but it was what the agency was built on.” As […]
By 2017, digital advertising spend will catch up with linear TV at $68 billion, according to Magna’s latest update to its US ad revenue forecast. But linear TV isn’t going anywhere just yet. “This year what has surprised me is the resilience of national TV,” said Vincent Letang, EVP for global market intelligence at Magna. […]
Aside from some fiery rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of the Association of National Advertisers’ (ANA) transparency report, the overall response of agencies to the trade group’s findings has been fairly muted. But independent agencies Mediasmith and Empower MediaMarketing have taken a stand by ending their memberships with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) […]
On Thursday – amid strengthening rumors of an IPO – Snapchat finally released its anticipated ads API to enable better automation, targeting and measurement. It is running with nine partners. Advertisers can buy Snap Ads – full-screen, sound-on, vertical video ad units – programmatically on the platform. “Advertisers [can now] glean insights and better optimize […]
After many years in leadership roles at media agencies, Jordan Bitterman will move to the brand and media side as chief marketing officer of The Weather Co., the IBM-owned company said Wednesday. Bitterman brings extensive knowledge of how media companies can drive efficiencies in the data-driven milieu. He said The Weather Co. is in a […]
Carat has a leg up on holding companies scrambling to integrate siloed teams. As part of Dentsu Aegis Network, the media agency operates on a shared profit-and-loss (P&L) statement by country across the network. That allows it to pull in specialist media capabilities to better serve its clients, without those teams competing financially. “This idea […]
Are the Chinese buyers that have been feasting on Western ad tech companies just starting on their appetizers? Eastern buyouts marked the biggest shift in merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in the ad tech space this past quarter, said Terry Kawaja, CEO of Luma Partners, which released its Q3 M&A report on Friday. “What’s been […]
Times Square was abuzz this week with talk of the elusive “agency of the future.” “Agencies will need to be far more empathic, far nimbler and more agile,” said Paul Gunning, CEO of DDB Chicago, on Tuesday at Advertising Week in New York City. “The holding company getting rid of silos is the foundation of […]
Agencies that don’t comply with the American Association of Advertising Agencies’ (4As) Transparency Guiding Principles of Conduct (TGPC) will risk losing their memberships. Under the new rule, which the agency trade body blogged about on Monday, anyone (from marketers to executives from other agencies) who finds an agency is not compliant with the 4As’ guidelines […]
Banks, brokerages, insurance companies, mortgage providers and the like want to direct their advertising spend toward users they know will convert, which requires granular audience targeting. “The KPIs are just much more performance-oriented,” said Jordan Bick, VP of financial services at Pandora, which recently began working with financial services advertisers. “They want to know how […]
Over the last year Omnicom went on a tear, poaching big-brand clients from its competitors. Omnicom Media Group (OMG) lured Procter & Gamble from Publicis Groupe’s Starcom Mediavest and built the data-driven agency Hearts & Science to support it. AT&T also consolidated its business under Omnicom when it moved its media account from WPP’s MEC to Hearts […]
Mobile has been reshaping the way advertisers spend on digital, but the pace is picking up significantly, setting the stage for desktop ad spend to contract even faster than legacy channels. As advertisers shift spend to mobile, desktop advertising will shrink faster than newspapers and magazines, according to Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecast, released on Monday. […]
This is the third installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read previous interviews with Nazanin Jazayeri and Andrew Klein. Data is a vehicle for great storytelling, according to Ella Chinitz, group vice president of data science at Razorfish. “[It’s about] deriving insights out of […]
The digital takeover of global ad spend ain’t here yet, according to Carat’s global ad forecast. “Not to discount digital by any stretch of the imagination, but we’ve seen somewhat of a resurgence of what’s going on with linear TV,” said Andy Donchin, chief investment officer at Dentsu Aegis Network, which owns Carat. Some advertisers […]
Podcasting is officially on the radar of media buyers. The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) second annual Podcast Upfront in New York City – held Wednesday with twice as many presenters and attendees as last year’s inaugural event – underscored the growth in the sector. Yet measurement beyond the download metric still poses a major challenge […]
When Dentsu Aegis Network bought programmatic shop Accordant Media on Thursday, it was the Japanese holding company’s second major tech acquisition in less than a month, following the majority stake Dentsu took in CRM agency Merkle. “Programmatic is the way of working in the future and we’ll continue to invest in people who have the […]
This is the second installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Read the first PII interview with Nazanin Jazayeri. As associate director of social experience and custom product at Publicis’ Mediavest | Spark, Andrew Klein loves discovering new technologies and platforms. That wasn’t how […]
Agencies are straining to recruit and retain data-driven talent. Prospects with a strong background in statistical analysis and data mining – the second most popular skill on LinkedIn as of January – aren’t necessarily looking to work at a media agency. And it’s hard for agencies to retain employees due to a business culture that […]
This is the first installment in “PII,” a series featuring the talent that makes the wheels turn in our data-driven advertising world. Nazanin Jazayeri is a translator. As director of advanced analytics at Mindshare, she’s part of a team that bridges product developers, media planners and buyers by interpreting the massive streams of data that […]
Xaxis, despite scrutiny of its principal-based buying methods in the ANA’s June report, will grow at a forecasted rate of 25% year over year, WPP said on an investor call Wednesday. Based on the holding company’s H1 earnings report, neither WPP nor Xaxis have yet taken a major hit from the ANA’s findings. Advertising and […]
When DigitasLBi appointed Emily Macdonald as its first head of programmatic on Thursday, it wanted to ensure all employees across planning, buying, data and analytics teams are trained on programmatic buying. The newly created international role comes from Publicis Groupe’s recent reshuffle to integrate programmatic as a service across all of its agencies, beginning last year […]
When General Mills launched Tiny Toast in June, its first new cereal brand in more than 15 years, the company also launched its first completely digital marketing campaign. Because General Mills was targeting millennials, it stayed away from traditional TV and instead placed short video clips across YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram. In the two months […]
