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.
A new Snapchat campaign from 20th Century Fox for “X-Men: Apocalypse” will drive awareness and ticket sales for the movie’s Friday premier. Snapchat has run plenty of branding-oriented campaigns, but this new effort is one of very few forays that include a direct-response component (in the form of a Fandango e-commerce call to action), a […]
More than half of US advertisers are unaware they’re buying “sourced” publisher traffic that may be riddled with bots and fraud, according to a study released Tuesday by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). Sixty-one percent of advertisers are either “slightly familiar” or “not familiar at all” with sourced traffic. Only 5% of advertisers surveyed […]
Viacom and American Express on Tuesday announced Vantage Intent – a Viacom product powered by AmEx – to help advertisers use purchase intent to find audiences across TV, digital and social. As a premium offering within the data and audience platform Viacom Vantage, Vantage Intent is designed to analyze roughly $1 trillion worth of AmEx’s […]
Many agree there’s a great need for holding companies to integrate their media buying structure “horizontally”: to collaborate rather than compete across groups. Is it possible the obstacle lies not with the agency, but with the client? Executives from Dentsu Aegis, IPG, Havas, Omnicom and WPP took up the question at the Modern Marketing Summit […]
Since B2B publishers are still waking up to the possibilities of programmatic, media buyers must find B2B audiences on consumer sites. Sixty-three percent of media planners and buyers execute B2B campaigns programmatically, as opposed to 73% who do so for B2C campaigns, according to the inaugural “B2B Programmatic Media Planning and Buying” study released Friday by […]
Clients want their agencies to operate in fluid, multidisciplinary teams. That’s hard to achieve for larger holding companies traditionally siloed into distinct arms. Disparate units working toward internal goals often find themselves competing instead of collaborating to meet client KPIs. Hearst-owned marketing agency iCrossing is challenging this model with a new structure that promotes omnichannel […]
The ailing agency-client relationship is so bad that it resembles a married couple who “hasn’t had sex since 1972.” That’s the grim assessment of Debra Giampoli, director of global strategic agency relations at Mondelez. She speaks from experience: Mondelez has sometimes seen its smaller brands neglected by larger agencies that didn’t understand their business needs. […]
If marketing is the creative visionary of a big brand, procurement is its practical, strict counterpart. Marketing wants to spend big on the big idea, and procurement wants to save as much as possible. The two often can’t see eye to eye – and marketing budgets suffer. At the ANA’s Financial Management Conference in Boca […]
Marketers and CFOs are struggling to speak each other’s languages, and agencies are getting drowned out amidst the noise. When a brand’s marketing and finance teams can’t align on a goal, the agency fails to meet client KPIs. Agency responsibilities are either passed off to new players in the space, like tech firms and management […]
Pandora’s Q1 2016 call on Thursday revealed that programmatic sales of display inventory drove increased sell-through rates. In an earnings release, Pandora claimed the buying method is “starting to contribute meaningfully” to advertising revenue per 1,000 ad-supported listener hours, which grew 19% year over year to $45.47, and take pressure off ad loads. Pandora made […]
Digital holds a 29.3% share of all media investment in the United States, up from 28% last quarter, according to GroupM’s annual Interaction 2016 report, which aggregates insights from the agency’s digital advertising activities and was released on Monday. GroupM focused its findings around four core issues related to the growth of mobile: the difficulty […]
About one year ago, GroupM quietly introduced a new structure designed to consolidate its real-time ad buying capabilities across programmatic, social, search and mobile. Called Connect, the new group appeared to be the WPP-owned media agency network’s answer to the growing need for programmatic decentralization of programmatic buying. We have seen that decentralization play out across […]
In an unusual partnership between agency and onboarder, DigitasLBi has teamed up with LiveRamp to sharpen and speed up the segmentation capabilities of its advanced analytics platform to drive more targeted campaigns. DigitasLBi said Thursday that it will leverage LiveRamp’s data connectivity services on IDIOM, its advanced analytics platform – still in the process of […]
Programmatic revenues from Omnicom’s trading desk, Accuen, grew $25 million YoY, the holding company noted Tuesday during its Q1 2016 earnings call. Notably, Accuen’s performance since 2014 has reliably shown YoY revenue growth of between $20 million and $40 million. Q1 2016 – $25M Q4 2015 – $45M Q3 2015 – $25M Q2 2015 – […]
More than a quarter of programmatic decisions are made by agencies for their advertisers – up from 20% since September. The revelation was presented by Mark Mahaney, managing director at RBC Capital Markets, at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC I.O conference in San Francisco on Thursday. The figures, which surprised Mahaney, show agencies make 27% of those decisions […]
MDC’s media buying arm, Varick Media Management, unveiled a dynamic creative solution called Pictor on Thursday, an HTML5 ad builder that uses audience and campaign data to adjust the ad unit creative in real time. Pictor adds a programmatic messaging element to Alveo, Varick’s proprietary tech stack launched in October. “The big missing piece for […]
When Omnicom Media Group on Friday launched Hearts & Science, its third agency network alongside OMD and PHD, it chose Annalect founder and CEO Scott Hagedorn to lead the effort. The development comes four months after Omnicom grabbed the majority of Procter & Gamble’s $2 billion media account from Publicis Groupe’s Starcom Mediavest. Part of P&G’s […]
Digital audio inventory is increasingly available for programmatic purchase. But while audio publishers see value in the audience-based buying and granular targeting that programmatic offers, they are wary of dumping their inventory into an open exchange. And advertisers aren’t really sure how programmatic audio fits into their paid media mix. Here’s the landscape: iHeartRadio inventory […]
1-800-Flowers.com announced on Friday that it will deploy IBM Commerce on Cloud to begin integrating its supply chain from inventory to fulfillment and delivery. “The IBM Cloud will reduce complexity, provide the proper focus and enhance the ability to provide wonderful services to the customer,” said the CIO of 1-800-Flowers, Arnie Leap. The tech-savvy retailer […]
Publicis Groupe’s Publicis.Sapient platform was a big winner in Gartner Research’s ranking of digital agencies, released Friday. Publicis.Spaients’s three digital agency brands, Razorfish, SapientNitro and Digitas LBI were recognized as “Leaders” in the research firm’s Magic Quadrant for global digital marketing agencies. Gartner reserves the Leader designation for companies that exhibit both completeness of vision […]
Marketing services and tech M&A activity in the first quarter of 2016 resulted in 187 transactions that generated $8.1 billion of deal value, according to JEGI’s Q1 2016 M&A overview report, released on Friday. More than half of the deal value in marketing services and tech came from the data and analytics subsector ($4.3 billion […]
While MAGNA Global and ZenithOptimedia projected in their most recent forecasts that digital ad spend will exceed TV by 2017, Dentsu Aegis Network’s Carat begs to differ. The agency’s global ad spend report released Thursday found that while digital media will account for 29.3% of global advertising spend by 2017 ($161 billion), TV will still […]
Jonathan Hsia will discuss advertiser perceptions of ad tech on April 13 at PROGRAMMATIC.IO in San Francisco. While ad tech capabilities have matured, marketers still need to catch up, said Jonathan Hsia, Mindshare North America’s head of digital investment. “It really is more a question of: What do marketers need to do to leverage ad tech in a […]
Brian McAndrews is out as CEO and president of Pandora, where he served since 2013. He has been replaced by company founder Tim Westergren. McAndrews, who has a long history in digital advertising, departs at a time when Pandora faces major growth challenges in the intensely competitive music streaming space. While McAndrews brought a long […]
Mobile ad revenue will grow 128% by 2018, accounting for 92% of new global advertising dollars, according to the global ad spend forecast from Publicis Groupe-owned ZenithOptimedia, released Monday. That’s an increase of $64 billion over the next three years. “Consumers are using their mobile devices to consume media in a place where they previously […]
A handful of ad tech employees who started out at agencies are now returning to senior-level agency roles. And they’re bringing a particularly valuable blend of skills with them. According to Accuen CEO Megan Pagliuca, that initial agency experience is key. “There’s a big con of hiring people from ad tech [without an agency background] […]
Almighty, an independent digital agency in Boston, revealed on Wednesday the launch of a division called Almighty(X), designed to help clients evaluate their technology stacks from budget and optimization standpoints. The goal is to provide more transparency in the agency-client relationship. Almighty(X) will be headed up by Rob Griffin, a former senior executive at French media giant […]
Local merchants selling CPG products and home appliances don’t have the resources to prioritize marketing, especially in digital channels. That’s a problem for CPG brands and appliance manufacturers, who know that some of the biggest buys happen in-store. Enter Netsertive, which in 2009 set out to bridge the gap between brands and local distributors. It […]
Digilant, a Boston-based programmatic solutions provider, announced Alan Osetek as its new CEO on Tuesday. Osetek last served as the global president of Omnicom Media Group’s Resolution Media. “We were looking for someone that understood programmatic media in the broadest sense,” said Don Epperson, CEO of ISP Digital. “[Osetek is] a great fit for us […]
Publicis.Sapient acquired Salesforce Gold partner Vertiba on Wednesday to expand its ability to build and deploy Salesforce marketing cloud solutions. Publicis.Sapient did not disclose the terms of the acquisition or Vertiba’s employee headcount. Founded in 2010, Vertiba is a consultancy specializing in installation of Salesforce’s cloud solutions. Publicis.Sapient inherits Vertiba’s know-how on applying Salesforce’s tools […]
