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.
Brands are avoiding “coronavirus”-related keywords like they’re the actual coronavirus. And in times like these, it’s up to the buy side to start an open conversation about brand safety tolerance, said GroupM executive Oscar Garza. “It’s understandable some brands don’t want to be associated with tragedy, but at the same time, news is news,” he […]
Marketing and agency veteran Wendy Clark will become the global CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), the company said on Monday. She is the first female CEO of a global agency network. She will start in September and report into Tim Andree, DAN’s global chairman, who took on the global CEO role after Jerry Buhlmann […]
Being a freelancer right now in the marketing and advertising industry is unpredictable. While some work continues to come in, other projects are sputtering to a halt. But as more marketing professionals get laid off or furloughed, demand for freelance work is on the rise. “We get really good news and then really bummer news […]
Marketers facing today’s uncertainty can focus on internal initiatives like stack evaluation and data strategy, said Ana Milicevic, principal and co-founder of Sparrow Advisers. That is, of course, if they still have the budget. For many of Sparrow’s clients, it’s hard to look beyond the next few weeks. Publishers are doing anything they can to […]
Bowing to pressure from agency holding companies, Ascential has canceled the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for 2020. The ad industry’s largest annual event was postponed on March 18 from its regular timing in late June to late October 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The festival will now resume in June 2021, when […]
March Madness. The Olympics. The NBA and NHL playoffs. Brand marketers spend billions on tentpole sporting events annually, but with live sports either canceled or postponed for the year, they must now figure out where to repurpose that budget – or decide if they can use it at all. Here’s how marketers are adjusting […]
In this new podcast series, AdExchanger editors break the cabin fever by talking with the top thought leaders and practitioners in digital and data-driven advertising – all while under social isolation Hearts & Science CEO Erin Matts is waiting out the COVID-19 pandemic in a cabin in the woods in Barryville, New York, running virtual […]
In this new podcast series, AdExchanger editors break the cabin fever by talking with the top thought leaders and practitioners in digital and data-driven advertising – all while under social isolation. On a normal day, Christian Juhl juggles his job as global CEO of the world’s largest media buying firm with being a single dad. […]
Working with clients in travel, brick-and-mortar retail, hospitality and live entertainment right now is a bit of a hot mess. These brands are pausing their ad spend as their businesses get completely shut down – which makes it tricky for media agencies to perform their regular duties. “It’s volatile, chaotic, uncertain and ambiguous, and on […]
Magna’s latest 2020 global ad spend figures, released Thursday, are pretty bleak. Global ad spend will be down 2.8% this year to $217 billion in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. That’s revised downward from Magna’s December forecast, which anticipated 6.6% growth to in 2020. Linear will be hit the hardest, thanks to the postponement […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Alison Weissbrot, senior editor at AdExchanger. It’s part of a series of perspectives from AdExchanger’s editorial team. Facebook’s director of product management Rob Leathern tweeted Thursday that the social media […]
Agencies, used to face-to-face meetings, are grappling to pivot to a remote workforce in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Navigating client uncertainties, making urgent changes to in-market campaigns and pausing long-term projects to make room for pressing work are top concerns as agencies adjust to work-from-home life. Here’s how a handful of large digital and […]
Being a working mom was hard enough. Then COVID-19 came along. With schools closed, Andrea Zapata, VP of data innovation and insights at Effectv, Comcast’s cable ad sales group, is pulling data to help clients understand how media will be impacted by COVID-19 one minute while teaching her five- and seven-year-old boys how to read, […]
Industry executives can put away their magnum rosé bottles until October. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will postpone its annual June gathering until Oct. 26 to 30, the organizers said on Wednesday. All sponsorships, passes and bookings for official customers will roll over for the postponed event. Read the release. “As always, the […]
Ad spend by major brands in China has dwindled significantly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and could be a sign of what’s to come across the rest of the world. EMarketer slashed its October China ad spend forecast by 6.2% on Tuesday, bringing annual media spend projections down from 10.5% growth to […]
Acxiom’s new global CEO Chad Engelgau, appointed in early March, has a big job ahead of him, navigating clients through privacy laws and browser restrictions while integrating the business with parent company IPG. Engelgau, a 12-year Acxiom vet, reports directly to Arun Kumar, IPG’s chief technology and data officer. Acxiom sits alongside IPG’s programmatic unit […]
Might the TV buyer’s dream of purchasing inventory across networks using the same audience definition finally be coming true? AMC Networks, Disney and WarnerMedia said Wednesday their linear TV inventory will be available through Xandr Invest. Starting mid-April, buyers will be able to log into Xandr Invest, Xandr’s programmatic buying platform, to access linear TV […]
It’s clunky getting people to add something to their shopping cart from a display ad. Ad tech company LoopMe launched Tuesday a shoppable in-app unit designed to streamline that process. “The more you can reduce the number of clicks, the better it is for conversion,” said Par Vajihollahi, marketing manager at vitamins and supplements maker […]
Quibi, the much-hyped short-form mobile video service, has racked up an exorbitant $1.75 billion in funding ahead of its April 6 launch – closing on a second round of $750 million just last Wednesday. With a bet that people will pay $4.99 per month for 10-minute scripted series supported by ads, Quibi is attracting major […]
TV is becoming more addressable around the world. GroupM is getting in on the trend with the expansion of its addressable TV business Finecast to Canada on Thursday as its first North American market. Finecast was launched in the fall of 2017 in the United Kingdom to help buyers and sellers target audiences on linear […]
The coronavirus outbreak has caused marketers to rethink their 2020 budgets, delay campaign launches, sit out conferences and experiment with remote work. Despite this disruption, we’re still largely in wait-and-see mode in terms of how the virus will impact operations in the United States. Here’s the quick lowdown on how COVID-19’s warpath through the world […]
The supply-side platform Index Exchange and WPP’s media buying unit GroupM are approaching publishers with an unusual partnership. According to three publishers who were briefed about the deal, GroupM will begin to rout a majority of its demand through Index Exchange as part of a supply-path optimization (SPO) effort. Concentrating demand on Index’s pipes will […]
In the midst of a three-year turnaround plan, WPP posted lackluster results for Q4 and 2019. Revenues dropped 1.9% in Q4 and 1.6% for 2019, bringing full year revenues to roughly $14 billion. WPP’s stock dropped almost 15%, its sharpest decline since 1992. Most of WPP’s issue stem from North America, where like-for-like revenues dropped […]
Omnicom Media Group is already rethinking how to monetize attention, in light of Google’s decision to remove third-party cookies from Chrome in two years. “We are starting to push clients to think about attention as dynamic and be more considerate in how we activate against it,” said OMG CEO Scott Hagedorn. But rethinking customer attention […]
As the local TV market grapples with falling ratings and viewership, it’s getting harder to meet the reach demands of advertisers. “We still hold our stations accountable to their guaranteed ratings,” said Joe Cerone, EVP of local investment at Zenith. “It may take extra spots to make it happen.” Local media sellers are trying to […]
With the launch of an ad sales division in December, Vizio is taking full advantage of the work its competitors have done to educate buyers on CTV advertising. “We’re piggybacking on the success of Roku, Samsung and Amazon,” said Mike O’Donnell, SVP of Vizio’s platform business. Similar to other device makers, Vizio’s proposition is to […]
Roku’s platform business is growing like a weed. Platform revenues, which include ad sales, increased 78% year over year in 2019 to $740 million, the company said Thursday in its Q4 2019 earnings report. Platform revenue accounted for 63% of Roku’s total annual revenue, which grew 52% year over year to $1.1 billion. In Q4, […]
IPG’s investors are struggling to grasp exactly what kind of data Acxiom works with and how the $3.2 billion acquisition positions the holding company in a privacy-centric world. “When we bought Acxiom, everyone misunderstood it to be InfoBase, which is the third-party data management offering,” CEO Michael Roth said on IPG’s Q4 earnings call on […]
Merkle on Tuesday launched Merkury, an identifier designed to allow marketers to continue targeting audiences online without using third-party cookies. Merkury uses technology from Merkle’s recent acquisition of 4Cite, a first-party publisher tag that lets media owners retarget audiences over email and on platforms such as Facebook by matching hashed email addresses. Here’s how it […]
It was the same old story at Publicis Group in 2019: lagging organic growth as it tried to overcome a struggling creative business and assemble the pieces from a long transformation. Organic growth dipped 2.3% to $12 billion in 2019, and declined 4.5% to $3.2 billion in Q4, in line with lowered expectations the company […]
