Media agencies are the No. 1 partner that brands are reviewing as COVID-19 rocks their marketing plans. Sixty-three percent of brands are reevaluating their media agencies, according to AdExchanger’s 2020 industry outlook report. That’s compared to 56% of respondents reassessing their data partners, 44% looking at new measurement partners and just 19% reexamining their relationships […]
Havas Media and GroupM each launched curated media marketplaces representing black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ and other minority-owned publishers, as well as publishers that create content specifically for underrepresented communities. Havas Media’s social equity private marketplace, which went live last Friday, represents roughly 250 publishers with minority and LGBTQ+ owners, including Blavity, MadameNoire and Black Enterprise. Moen […]
Supply-path optimization (SPO) has become a selling point for agencies looking to bring value and savings to clients in programmatic. An SPO strategy allows buyers to cut out players in the programmatic supply chain that don’t add value, such as resellers or exchanges that sell only duplicative inventory, while simultaneously funneling more spend toward exchanges […]
The past week has seen a reckoning begin over the content policies – or lack thereof – governing the big media platforms. Major marketers, including Coca-Cola, Unilever and Diageo, are halting spend on social media at least through July. But there’s always the danger than these efforts end up being an exercise in virtue signaling once they’re […]
The holding company MDC Partners was already struggling before COVID-19 decimated the US economy. But a proposed merger by Stagwell Group, first reported by AdAge late Thursday, demonstrates how the pandemic likely accelerated the end of MDC’s run as an independent public company. MDC Partners and Stagwell Group did not respond to requests for […]
The ad market will pay for the United States government’s late lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to GroupM’s midyear global ad spend forecast. The US advertising market will shrink 9.9% this year to $207.3 billion, excluding political ad spend, which will buoy the market by $15 billion in 2020, according to […]
Brand safety is not a static concept. COVID-19 has surfaced how using brand safety as a blunt instrument can de-monetize news publishers during times when information is needed most. And as the pandemic accelerates the adoption of connected TV, digital out of home (DOOH), digital audio and gaming, brands must have a nuanced approach to […]
Ninety-five percent of marketers have changed their 2020 marketing plans since March, according to a Dentsu Aegis Network survey, reflecting just how acutely the pandemic has heightened the need for flexibility. “It’s either been an optimization, a budget cut, a budget increase or shifting money throughout the year to better match new consumer behaviors,” said […]
The US agency sector will lay off about 52,000 jobs over the next two years as media spend declines 23%, Forrester predicts. Agencies are projected to cut 35,167 jobs in 2020 and 16,578 in 2021. The global picture is even starker, with the big six agency holding companies poised to eliminate an additional 49,695 […]
For better or for worse, the country is starting to reopen. But that doesn’t mean advertisers are simply flipping their media plans back on. As advertisers return to the market, they’re thinking critically about how consumer media and shopping habits have changed, and how strategies that worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the […]
Forrester’s Media Agency Wave, released Tuesday, gave the highest ratings to the agencies that used data platforms to improve both media execution and ad creatives and created a more centralized, integrated experience for their clients. IPG media agency UM led the 10 media agencies evaluated for the report. To qualify, each agency needed $10 billion […]
MightyHive, the programmatic and data arm under S4 Capital, said Tuesday it has merged with data and analytics firm Digodat in Latin America. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Digodat has more than 40 employees and offices in Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Colombia. The firm expands MightyHive’s Latin American presence beyond Brazil, where it […]
The remote work experiment caused by COVID-19 will transform agencies. Automation will become even more integral to agency workflows as consumer media habits shift, changing the nature of talent and services. Highly office-driven cultures will shift to a more remote, distributed workforce, as companies reduce their real estate holdings to drive efficiencies during the economic […]
Acxiom and Matterkind (née Cadreon) are tightening their partnership with a new addressable media solution for Acxiom clients released Thursday. For the first time, brands will be able to work with Acxiom for addressable media buying through the Addressable Advertising service. The media buys will be powered by Matterkind. More than 2,000 brands already work […]
The departure of long-time television investment executives at two of the world’s largest media agency groups, Omnicom Media Group and GroupM, underscores the changing television marketplace, accelerated by the pandemic. At GroupM, changes to the investment team began in 2016, when longtime chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni left. He was replaced by another investment vet, […]
While advertisers can find bargain-basement pricing for quality reach on social and programmatic display, it’s a different story for premium video formats such as CTV, according to a report aggregating pricing trends across Omnicom Media Group’s client base. The report, published by Mark Oster, director of trading operations at Omnicom Media Group, found that […]
The art of the pitch has changed since the pandemic, with employees having to let go of body language, physical cues and handshakes as they reorient around video conferencing. While pitches got delayed thanks to the lockdown, now they’re back in full force. So not much has changed in terms of volume, but meetings […]
Horizon Media said Thursday it has partnered with TransUnion to provide the people-based identity layer for its data platform, Blu. TransUnion’s deterministic identity graph covers all US adult individuals with privacy compliant, PII-based data spanning names, addresses, emails, mobile IDs and home IP addresses. Clients can append first- and third-party data sets to TransUnion’s identity […]
CEO and founder Lara Vandenberg had been planning to launch her new venture, Publicist, in mid-March. Then COVID-19 happened. But the idea behind the startup, an online platform that connects freelance marketing talent with brands and agencies, is doubly relevant in a rocky economic environment. Publicist launched on Tuesday. Vandenberg had been testing the platform […]
Publicis Groupe released an outcomes-based solution on Thursday aimed at midsize companies (MSBs) that provides a money-back guarantee. “If the desired KPI isn’t met, we’ll refund 100% of the client’s entire investment,” said Bryan Kennedy, CEO of Epsilon, which is powering the solution, called The Pact, for its new parent company. There are around 200,000 […]
WPP is slogging along with the rest of the agency market. Q1 like-for-like revenues were down 3.8% to $3.5 billion, the company said Wednesday. In North America, WPP’s largest market, like-for-like revenue was down 1.9% to roughly $1.2 billion. Grey, GroupM and VMLY&R all grew in the region, but revenues began to sag across the […]
Despite COVID-19, Merkle didn’t think twice about promoting longtime executive Craig Dempster to global CEO last week, sticking to a succession plan two years in the making. “We built a strategy and worked to execute against it,” Dempster said. “We didn’t spend a lot of time debating it.” Dempster, previously president of Merkle in the […]
Holding companies are being hit hard by the pandemic, and IPG is no exception. The company reported Wednesday that Q1 2020 net organic growth was 0.3% YoY to $1.97 billion, compared to 6.4% growth during the same period a year ago. Revenue was negatively impacted by account losses and the coronavirus pandemic in certain regions, […]
This story has been updated to reflect Tuesday’s earnings call. Publicis Groupe said Monday it will cut the salaries of chairman and CEO Arthur Sadoun and executive chairman of the supervisory board Maurice Lévy by 30% in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The company will also reduce compensation by 20% for management board members. For […]
Dentsu Aegis Network, the international arm of Japanese agency conglomerate Dentsu, will cut all employee salaries by 10% in response to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Senior executives took a higher salary deduction, a Dentsu Aegis spokesperson said, but declined to specify how much. Dentsu Aegis Network employs about 45,000 people across 145 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Over the last two weeks, there probably wasn’t a lawyer in America who didn’t field at least one phone call from a stressed-out client asking about activating force majeure to get out of a contract. With events on ice for the foreseeable – media buys either canceled or postponed and commercial productions ground to a […]
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 […]
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 […]
