Agencies

Independent performance agency Tinuiti is making a bigger push into social with the acquisition of growth marketing shop Ampush on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Boathouse launched a product called Narrative Transformation through partnerships with consumer and market intelligence platforms Signal AI and NetBase Quid. The tool helps brands “cut through the clutter, get to the 10 or 15 most important conversations and give actionable insights,” said Boathouse President Peter Prodromou.

Goodway Group has chosen Jay Friedman as CEO. Friedman assumes the chief executive position after more than 16 years at the company, most recently as president. Former CEO David Wolk moves into the role of executive chairman.

In the face of persistent economic uncertainty, marketers are simultaneously hustling to satisfy quickly changing consumer appetites and striving to squeeze the value out of every last marketing dollar. Not to mention needing to adopt full-funnel marketing approaches and allocate spend to channels as flexibly as possible.

In October, Anagram spun off from programmatic platform Digilant and relaunched as a full-service media agency. Since then, it’s set its sights on serving the little guys: midmarket brands.

Global advertising revenue grew 6.5% in 2022 and is projected to grow 5.9% in 2023, according to GroupM’s global year-end industry growth forecast. Meanwhile, Magna’s December global ad forecast predicts 4.8% growth in 2023 after 6.6% growth in 2022.

Ad agencies are understaffed and their clients – small businesses in particular – often don’t have the time or the technical background to sift through reams of campaign data. And so, increasingly, they’re turning to automation to cut down on the more tedious and time-consuming aspects of account management. Tag, an independent agency based in Iowa, uses a suite of automated reporting tools, including from Basis Technologies, to communicate cross-platform campaign metrics to its clients.

Rising inflation, flagging consumer confidence and uncertainty due to ongoing supply-chain issues have economists predicting a recession. But, based on GroupM’s and Zenith’s mid-year forecasts of the global ad market, the recession fears may be unfounded. Still, after the record highs of 2021, ad spending will see a deceleration in 2022.

With new first-party ID solutions flooding the market, the buy side of the ad industry is looking for ways to enhance campaign targeting and attribution by matching different first-party data sets. To that end, Goodway Group built its own first-party ID solution dubbed Passport One. The tool allows advertisers to connect to multiple data sets in one place.

Paula Connard, chief personalization officer at Horizon Media, on why third-party data is disappointing, why testing proposals in the Chrome Privacy Sandbox isn’t a top priority, why the indie agency decided to build rather than buy a data platform and the questions she’s getting from clients as they deal with signal loss.

Ad agencies have had an oversupply of crises to deal with over the past two years. Between the pandemic, the ongoing disruption of how the ad industry gathers and uses data and the Great Resignation, leaders have contended with outside forces on multiple fronts. Kepler’s CEO of North America Remy Stiles details how she’s keeping the ship steering in the right direction.

The Great Resignation has hit digital and media agencies hard. But there are some things agencies can do to stop the not-so-virtuous cycle, said Ralph Pardo, US CEO of Omnicom agency Hearts & Science, speaking at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York City on Tuesday.

Digital advertising is on track to grow 31% in 2021, and will likely account for 64.4% of all advertising this year, according to GroupM’s year-end industry growth forecast. As of December, a total industrywide growth rate of 22.5% is expected for the year 2021. “It’s possible that this is the fastest growth in the history […]

While diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts to work with minority-owned media companies and hire a diverse workforce are important, brands also need to address a rapidly changing cultural landscape in the United States, according to Isaac Mizrahi, co-president and COO of Miami-based multicultural ad agency Alma Ad Agency (no relation to the fashion designer). […]

A year ago, all the major ad agency holding companies were digging themselves out of a deep hole, as investors hedged their bets on the return of ad budgets and even the survival of traditional agencies. Fast forward one year – and what a difference that year has made. Omnicom lost more than a third […]

Dentsu-owned Merkle has acquired LiveArea, an experiential commerce agency, for $250 million, the companies said Tuesday. Merkle will add LiveArea’s 590 employees to its roster. LiveArea works with retailers and brands, though mostly retailers, on commerce and marketing. It provides design and creative strategy, but its primary offering integrates customer data with ecommerce tech such […]

Advertising revenue in the United States is expected to increase by 22% to $279 billion in 2021, a sign that the industry has turned a corner following the uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to GroupM’s mid-year forecast released Thursday. Digital advertising revenue will grow even faster, by 33%, in 2021 – building on last […]

IPG’s marketing intelligence firm Kinesso has hired Dr. Femi Olu-Lafe as the SVP of culture and inclusion. Olu–Lafe was brought on to push the needle on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across Kinesso and its sister IPG companies, Acxiom and Matterkind.  Olu-Lafe – previously a senior leader and DEI consultant at YSC Consulting and […]

In the days after the Jan. 6 mob attack on the US Capitol – fueled in large part by former President Trump’s false claims of election fraud – advertisers quickly paused their ad spending amid the heightened sensitivity. By most accounts, the ads were pulled back for 24 to 48 hours by brands and agencies, […]

You & Mr Jones completed a $260 million Series B round on Tuesday coming on the heels of an impressive 2020 during which clients tapped into its strengths in digital and ecommerce. The company grew organically by more than 27%, while traditional agencies struggled their way through the pandemic. “We’ve just been through a year […]

Although it’s too early to predict how the antitrust lawsuits filed against Google and Facebook late last year will play out, one immediate outcome is more awareness of how digital advertising functions. “Many of the topics we’ve been so obsessed with in the ad tech industry are no longer just being talked about within the […]

The brand client has become the agency CEO. In mid-December, former Electronic Arts marketer Belinda Smith was appointed as CEO of the Americas at media agency m/SIX, a joint venture backed by The&Partnership and GroupM, and also one of EA’s external agency partners. That’s how Smith met the crew at m/Six, where she’ll now oversee […]

GroupM recently promoted veterans Kieley Taylor and Amanda Grant to global head of partnerships and global head of social, respectively, as part a strategic move aimed at strengthening the company’s relationships with Google as well as Amazon, Spotify, Twitter and others. Taylor, previously global head of social, will focus heavily on Google as she designs […]

Epsilon is helping clients prepare for the new world of digital marketing that will follow after the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome and IDFA on Apple devices. While Epsilon’s ID graph still uses cookies and mobile ad IDs while they’re available, its CORE ID relies on deterministic matches against transactions and conversions, such as […]

Rishad Tobaccowala has kept busy during the pandemic. Since leaving his post as Publicis Groupe’s chief strategy officer in March, he’s been dabbling in various passion projects and advising CEOs and Fortune 5000 companies, including Publicis. Most recently, in August, he joined the advisory board of ad tech company LoopMe. Tobaccowala also released a book […]

Agencies spend too much time doing manual work. One of the biggest time sucks? Transferring data files between enterprise systems that don’t talk to each other. Max Cheprasov, now an exec at the Dentsu Aegis holding company level, recognized these inefficiencies while working at Dentsu agency iProspect starting in 2011. He set out to document […]

  As the pandemic rages on, media agencies are helping clients navigate the shift to online shopping. Measurement and analytics platform Profitero said on Wednesday that it’s partnering with Dentsu, IPG, MDC Partners and VaynerMedia, as well as the commerce divisions at Horizon Media and Publicis Groupe, to make its ecommerce data and measurement tools […]

COVID-19 has had an outsize negative effect on GroupM than on the rest of parent company WPP’s business as clients paused and cut back on media spend during the crisis. The holding company did not break out GroupM’s Q2 or H1 revenues, but WPP CEO Mark Read told investors on Thursday that the media buying […]

Former Xandr exec Kirk McDonald will join GroupM as its CEO for North America, the company said Tuesday. McDonald, who’s been serving as the interim head of AT&T-owned Xandr since CEO Brian Lesser stepped down in March, will report directly to GroupM Global CEO Christian Juhl. McDonald will be replaced by AT&T exec Mike Welch […]

If agencies, media companies and ad tech firms are going to fulfill their renewed promise in recent months to diversify their workforces, they’ve got to reach out to Black students and recent college grads early to explain why a career in advertising is something worth pursuing. With that in mind, Steven Golus, a DoubleClick and […]