Does The W Stand For “Weak”?
Last year wasn’t great for WPP, enough that the holdco’s shares dipped to a four-year low on Thursday after posting its 2024 results, Reuters reports.
Excluding pass-through costs (meaning expenses that a business pays and then passes on to its clients), WPP’s revenue declined from 11.8 billion pounds (roughly $14.9 billion) in 2023 to 11.4 billion pounds ($14.4 billion) in 2024.
Adjusted for new and divested business, that represents a 1% like-for-like decrease over the past year. Q4 was hit the hardest, with like-for-like revenue (minus pass-through costs) declining 2.3%.
According to CEO Mark Read, “weaker client discretionary spend” in Q4 was partly to blame. He also cited concerns over a weak Chinese market and uncertainty over impending US tariffs.
One of the few bright spots was GroupM, WPP’s media buying arm, which grew 2.4% during Q4 and 2.7% over the full year, perhaps thanks at least in part to its new leadership. (Hi there, Brian Lesser.)
Moving forward, WPP plans to invest more in AI, data and technology. One of the main beneficiaries of this investment will be its homegrown operating system, WPP Open, which the holdco says was “critical” to its new business wins.
Sponsored Splits
Brands have largely stopped taking social or political stances, and many have also blacklisted and filtered all sorts of news-related or social issue keywords from their digital buys.
Yet marketers choosing sides and getting involved with pot-stirring controversies is a way to court virality. Which perhaps explains the recent trend of social media advertisers targeting heartbroken minor reality show stars or influencers after a romantic split.
“Sponsored breakups are becoming a staple for marketers as they target heavy users of social media,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
And now that’s a sentence that exists.
Take, for example, the couple from a Bravo show called “Summer House” that capitalized on their breakup. Carl Radke, one half of the former engaged pair, did a promotion for Goldfish, while Lindsay Hubbard, the ex-fiancee, did a “clapback ad” with Cheez-It poking fun at Radke’s teeth.
The cracker company “engineered the partnership” after seeing Hubbard eat Cheez-Its on the show, according to Diane Sayler, the director of full-funnel marketing for Kellanova’s salty brands, which includes Cheez-It.
“As a marketer, when you have comments like we had here,” she says, “and you are spurring the kind of conversation that we saw … you know you’ve hit something.”
Trust, Don’t Verify
You either die a hero or live long enough to become ad verification tech.
That’s a slight paraphrase befitting the news that Quad and its media agency Rise will begin using log-file analytics software from Adalytics for client campaigns, Ad Age reports.
Part of the appeal of using Adalytics, according to Quad President of Media Joshua Lowcock, is that it works exclusively with brand marketers and agencies. It has no ad tech vendors, data sellers or sell-side players among its client base.
The Adalytics message resonates with agencies that aren’t satisfied with their ad verification options (i.e., Integral Ad Science, DoubleVerify and HUMAN, with Moat now out of the picture).
Goodway Group CEO Jay Friedman told AdExchanger last year that his agency no longer recommends that clients use those verification services.
Lowcock was formerly global chief media officer at agency UM Worldwide. In a past life, Arielle Garcia, now COO of Check My Ads, reported directly to him. Her title back then was chief privacy and responsibility officer. (Check My Ads collaborated with Adalytics on its recent report about the alleged monetization of child sexual abuse material.)
Both Lowcock and Garcia left UM in 2023 with bridge-burning calls to action regarding the need for more trust and transparency in the online advertising ecosystem.
But Wait! There’s More
As Big Tech battles EU regulators, it also flaunts its value. [Digiday]
Podcasting sees explosive growth on YouTube. [Semafor]
Meta claims that an error in the Instagram Reels algorithm filled user feeds with videos depicting violence and gore. [404 Media]
Subscribers seem drawn to Wired’s dogged reporting on Elon Musk’s DOGE team. The tech pub added 62,500 new subscribers in the first two weeks of February. [AP]
Warner Bros. Discovery announced that subscribers to Max’s ad-supported tier will lose access to CNN and Bleacher Report Sports starting March 30. [Ars Technica]
Thanks for reading AdExchanger’s daily news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
