Marketers

Direct-to-consumer brands have just as much to learn about retail as traditional retail brands can learn from DTCs. “DTC founders make the mistake of thinking we know everything, just because we were able to scale and build our businesses faster,” said Nate Checketts, CEO and co-founder of Rhone, a men’s sports apparel startup founded in […]

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 […]

Nathan Poekert has reason to be cynical about the influencer industry. As global director of communications and marketing at BMW Group he’s seen influencers Photoshop their metrics or completely whiff on their contractual obligations. He’s stumbled across engagement pod communities where influencers pool support for each other in a quid pro quo effort to game […]

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 […]

“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 Chris Peterson, managing partner at R2C Group. At the heart of the direct-to-consumer (DTC) revolution is a fundamentally different relationship between brand and customer. That difference is driven by technology. Trillions […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Hand That Feeds Big tech may be disrupting linear television and OOH, but it’s also supporting those channels with marketing dollars. As AdExchanger reported recently, tech giants are increasing their ad investments to burnish their reputations and maintain growth in an increasingly saturated […]

“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 Bram Woolcott, product manager at TripleLift. Supply path optimization (SPO) is about finding the most efficient path to inventory, but there is no consensus about what efficiency actually is. Demand-side platforms […]

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 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. A ’score To Settle Comscore has gone from arguably the best-positioned company to solve television’s cross-channel measurement problem to being mired in executive overhauls and new product builds beleaguered with setbacks. Things looked bright in April 2018, though, when Comscore brought on former 360i […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mouse Trap Disney was a little low on pixie dust when it updated its ad sales strategy recently. The process has been rocky, according to The Information. Besides a reorg that crossed multiple departments (AdExchanger’s coverage), the Mouse House also swapped out its Comcast […]

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, […]

Nationwide brought programmatic in-house early in 2018, going all in with Google’s demand-side platform. This week on the podcast, head of programmatic Jamie Byrum tells the inside story of how the decision was made and what he learned along the way. According to Byrum, the process began with the ANA’s 2017 media transparency report. Leadership […]

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 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Not Quite Settled  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a prominent public research interest group, filed a complaint against the FTC’s $5 billion settlement with Facebook, arguing the deal is an unjustified victory for Facebook that fails to protect consumer privacy. The group is […]

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 […]

Digitally native companies made nearly $1 billion in commitments during this year’s upfront, making them the biggest advertiser category in NBCUniversal’s $7 billion upfront, the company said during its Q2 earnings Thursday. The digitally native category includes the “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) as well as direct-to-consumer companies like Peloton, NBCU’s CEO Steve […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. No Mo’ CMO Silvia Lagnado, McDonald’s global CMO since 2015, will leave the company in October, Ad Age reports. McDonald’s plans to scrap the global CMO role in favor of two marketing SVPs: Bob Rupczynski will oversee marketing tech and Colin Mitchell will focus […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Ecommerce and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands are flooding into television, and bring a new data-driven perspective to the old media channel. While legacy brands have pre-existing preferences for specific programs or media channels and for gross ratings points (GRPs), DTC startups are uniquely suited to bring digital tactics to TV advertising. “The result for legacy brands is […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Over The Top Ad-supported streaming TV service Tubi surpassed 20 million monthly users and 94 million hours of content in May, the company said Monday. Tubi’s fortunes are important because advertisers and investors are relying on ad-enabled VOD startups to challenge the position of […]

Havas isn’t facing the same pressure to grow as other holding companies are. The privately-held agency network, owned by French media mogul Vincent Bolloré’s family empire, The Bolloré Group, isn’t subject to pressures of the stock market. “When you’re privately owned, you can focus on the long term,” said the elder Bolloré’s son, Havas CEO […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. No More CMO For J&J Johnson & Johnson’s first CMO Alison Lewis is out after five years on the job. But the CPG giant seems like it’s getting rid of the role altogether, according to Ad Age. In a statement, J&J said: “We have […]

At Disney, no one messes with the Mouse. The brand is extremely protective of its reputation among consumers, one largely built on trust. At the same time, Disney is a data-driven publisher with an epic amount of O&O. There’s ABC, ESPN, Fox, Hulu, movies, hotel resorts, cruises, theme parks and everything else that formed the […]

Two years ago, Disney’s presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity focused on social inventory within the Disney Digital Network. This year, Disney has a lot more to pitch, with its refined data strategy, audiences available across all of its different properties, theme parks included, the acquisitions of Fox assets like National Geographic […]

Serious runners wear Saucony, the Boston-based footwear brand. But there are also many runners who don’t define themselves as hardcore. Rather, they’re attracted to what running enables them to do: Stay fit, enjoy good food or run for a cause. Saucony is tapping into that mentality through its Run for Good campaign, an Instagram-based relay […]

The destructive dreck on social platforms has brought the advertising industry to a breaking point. And so top brands, media agencies, industry associations and the platforms themselves are banding together to form the Global Alliance For Responsible Media. The organization, which launched Tuesday, will focus on making media sustainable and a force for good in […]

Michael Kassan was Mr. Cannes even before he sold MediaLink to the festival’s parent company, Ascential. This week, with Cannes Lions 2019 kicking off, Kassan spins tales of Cannes past, present and yet to come. He also talks about the evolution of MediaLink two years after the acquisition. (Spoiler: It’s going well. Kassan just extended […]

The Cannes Lions, the annual advertiser confab celebrating creativity on the French Riviera, is all about the glitz and glamour. But this year, beyond the branded yachts and magnum-sized bottles of rose, proving that creativity drove business performance will be a key ingredient in winning awards as marketers struggle for growth. Creatively, the focus will […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…