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.
Clorox’s Vivian Chang will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on Oct. 15 and 16. When Clorox acquired dietary supplement maker Nutranext in 2018, it wasn’t just to gain share in the health and wellness category. Nutranext already owned ecommerce health brands, like vitamin manufacturer Stop Aging Now, so the company also became […]
Brands are hesitant to go all-in on influencer marketing, which much like the early days of programmatic, is rife with black-box business models. Pricing and compensation vary significantly across influencers, and a lack of benchmarks and measurement make it difficult for brands to know if they’re getting a fair rate. Confusion around the value of […]
Agency holding companies have spent $12 billion on data assets over the past five years but have yet to successfully deploy those assets at their creative agencies, according to a Forrester report released Monday. “It’s still very much a media proposition,” said Jay Pattisall, Forrester analyst and author of the report. “[Creative] seems to be […]
Despite Xandr’s positioning as the TV platform of the future during its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara last week, agency buyers want to see more progress toward that goal. Certainly, Xandr has the right assets and strategy to create a programmatic marketplace for TV. Over the past year, Xandr launched a publisher network called Community, […]
NCC Media, the sales consortium owned by Comcast, Cox and Charter, rebranded as Ampersand Monday and released a bunch of new products, including a data-driven linear TV platform. Here’s what you need to know. Data-driven platform TV targets audiences across local and national buys The new platform is designed to collect and anonymize data across […]
Hulu is trying to change how the industry thinks about the TV ad experience. Over the past few years, Hulu has built interactive ad formats to fit consumer viewing behaviors. Earlier this year, for instance, Hulu introduced pause ads, which are served as overlays when a viewer pauses a show. Hulu has also maintained its […]
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing budgets are starting to include larger-scale media, which is having a massive impact on national TV ad spend, according to Magna’s fall 2019 ad spend forecast, released Thursday. Marketing spend in the DTC category increased 30% YoY in Q2 2019. And DTCs spent 50% more on national TV in particular. “These new […]
Xandr’s Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara might be a celebration of data-driven TV’s potential, but legacy business models and competitive interests are preventing advertisers and TV networks from reaching it. Advertisers want to efficiently reach audiences on digital and OTT channels, but the scale just isn’t there without a cross-network measurement or buying platform. “Uniformity, […]
Amazon’s steady growth into a major advertising destination has deepened its interests in influencer marketing. The Amazon Influencer Program launched in 2017 as a way for influencers to earn a rev-share from driving sales on Amazon through links on their social media posts. Amazon gives influencers a vanity URL (amazon.com/shop/influencername) that leads to a personal […]
Longtime AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein will leave the business at the end of the year. Rubenstein is the latest top executive at AppNexus to leave since the company was acquired by AT&T under its Xandr unit for $2 billion in June 2018. Founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley left the company in October 2018. Rubenstein joined […]
S4 Capital had a solid second quarter earnings report on Wednesday, with revenue up 41.6% to $108.5 million in the first half of 2019. But that didn’t stop CEO Martin Sorrell from spending a significant portion of the earnings call throwing shade at his competitors, especially his former empire WPP. When asked whether S4 needs […]
IPG revealed a series of changes to its executive suite on Monday that brings media leadership to the top of the organization. Philippe Krakowsky, IPG’s chief strategy and talent officer and CEO of IPG Mediabrands, will assume the newly-created position of chief operating officer. He will retain his duties as chief strategy and talent officer […]
Why pay an agency to concoct expensive creative when your consumers are already doing it for free? For direct-to-consumer bedding and bath brand Parachute, the answer is simple. Its customers regularly tag the brand in their organic posts on Instagram, which Parachute is able to repurpose for campaigns to retarget site visitors. Say someone is […]
The Martin Agency is best known for its iconic creative ideas. Who hasn’t seen the Geico Gecko? But in addition to doing creative work for blue chip clients such as Geico, Oreo and Buffalo Wild Wings, The Martin Agency is transforming into a sophisticated media organization. The creative agency has had media as part of […]
Simulmedia was doing data-driven TV before it was buzzy. Launched in 2009 by ad tech entrepreneur Dave Morgan, the platform is a two-sided marketplace that aggregates supply across national and local TV and facilitates audience-based buying at scale. While linear TV audiences have been on a steady decline over the past few years, the problem […]
Dentsu-owned performance agency iProspect said Wednesday it has acquired independent performance agency MuteSix. Terms of the deal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were not disclosed. MuteSix does creative production and performance marketing for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, including Theragun, Burst Oral Care and Grunt Style, and enterprise clients such as Petco and Shell. The […]
As a CPG, Diageo is always looking for efficiencies. And as a spirits’ brand, it’s especially vulnerable to brand safety issues. That’s why the beverage giant brought programmatic and social buying in house in North America, a decision that has driven both more control and “a lot of productivity and return,” said Jason Acker, Diageo’s […]
Most chocolate and candy bars are bought last minute on the way to the cash register, a difficult experience to recreate online, where there is no physical checkout. Rankin Carroll, Global VP and CMO of Mars Chocolate, oversees a portfolio including Skittles, M&M’s and Snickers, and he must not only transform their business models as […]
As Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions in North America, Nada Stirratt is responsible for overseeing all of Facebook’s managed service business with small businesses to the largest global brands in the region. These days, that job requires a healthy dose of explanation and apology. Facebook has been raked over the coals throughout 2018 and […]
The agency holding companies all face the same external struggles – new competition, slowing growth and the need for new skills. But they’re taking different paths to confront these challenges. Traditionally, holding companies followed the same playbook: growth by acquisition to amass the scale that gave them clout across major clients. But the shift to […]
WPP is still struggling to get back to growth in the United States, its largest market, where it hasn’t posted a positive quarter since Q1 2016. Q2 growth declined 5.4% in North America, an improvement from Q1’s 8.8% dip. WPP’s global revenues were down 0.6% to $8.9 billion in the first half of the year. […]
As audiences erode on linear TV, supply is shrinking and pricing is going up on scarcity value. Advertisers have already shifted a significant amount of money out of linear TV as audiences flock to digital. According to Zenith, digital will make up more than half of ad spend globally for the first time in 2021, […]
WPP agency Essence said Thursday that former APAC CEO and chief client officer Kyoko Matsushita has been elevated to global CEO. She succeeds former Essence global CEO Christian Juhl, who became global CEO of GroupM in July. Matsushita will continue Essence’s focus around data, technology and talent. The agency is known for its programmatic and […]
Over the past two years, connected TV (CTV) has gone from a niche rounding out linear TV audiences to a core component of premium video publisher’s inventory supply. That evolution has paid off for supply-side platform (SSP) Telaria, which recently shifted its focus away from desktop and mobile video to enable publishers to monetize their […]
The ad tech tax is decreasing as vendors along the supply chain become more transparent and lower their fees. While total US dollars spent on fees for non-social programmatic buys will grow 18% to $11.6 billion in 2019, that number is rising in aggregate because the amount of money spent on programmatic is increasing overall, […]
Kantar didn’t have much flexibility under WPP to buy companies and solutions to modernize its traditional market research business. “We’ve been out of the market for three or four years,” said Kantar CEO Eric Salama on a press call held Thursday to provide an update on its strategy under its new owner Bain Capital. But […]
Content is increasingly available across platforms and devices, but most media agencies still take a channel-based approach to planning. Linear and digital planners not only operate in silos, but the former use demographic data as their source of truth while the latter use behavioral data, creating a divide in both how agencies plan media and […]
Ad tech startup Ad/Fin saw an opportunity to build a business by partnering with the ANA and Ebiquity on a programmatic study. Here’s the story of how it made enemies of agency holding companies – and got caught up in the industry’s transparency reckoning. In early 2016, Ad/Fin met with leadership at Ebiquity and the […]
Smart home devices are not the first things that come to mind when consumers think of ADT. That caused a perception issue for the 145-year-old home security brand, which is one of the largest smart home security providers in the market. So when ADT brought on ex-Chewy.com, Amazon and eBay marketing exec Jochen “JK” Koedijk […]
It’s a big day for the big blue app. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) formally announced Wednesday it will fine Facebook $5 billion over Cambridge Analytica-related privacy violations and install oversight procedures to prioritize privacy and ensure enforcement at the company. In addition, a more than $100 million fine is expected from the Securities and Exchange […]
