Marketers

Intuit CMO Lucas Watson wants to give the financial services software company more name recognition among the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he last served as Google’s VP of global brand solutions and innovations before he joined Intuit last July. “As we start to stitch […]

As advertisers yank spend from YouTube and Google Display Network due to brand safety concerns, premium publishers see an opportunity. These pubs have long complained that audience-based buying devalues the context they provide – context they claim ensures brand safety. “Marketers are recognizing in a blunt force way the difference between a platform and publisher,” […]

By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]

Ad-supported brand-unsafe content is on the rise. DoubleVerify, which validates tens of billions of advertiser impressions per month, has blocked 8 million ads from appearing on content pages classified as hate speech – up threefold since January. And according to keyword targeting tech platform Grapeshot, the amount of terrorism-related content it sees flowing through its systems […]

The UK boycott of YouTube and the Google Display Network jumped the pond Wednesday when AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson joined the ever-growing pile-on of advertisers suspending their ad spend over brand safety concerns. But the issue at the heart of this developing scandal – ads appearing next to extremist and offensive content – […]

The mobile app Ibotta, which offers users cash back on purchases from retail and brand partners, is turning its receipt verification system into an in-store attribution tool. Ibotta users can link a loyalty card account or upload a picture of a store receipt to get cash back on products for which it offers discounts. But […]

NewsCred on Wednesday laid off 10% of its staff as it changes its product offering and adds advisory services to its content marketing software. As part of the reorg, NewsCred hired a president and COO, Charles Hough. “We’ve been selling [brands] content marketing platforms, but they need expert services, and someone to hold their hand […]

Google updated its brand safety controls on Tuesday after a slew of companies pulled advertising spend from YouTube and Google Ad Exchange. In response to the withdrawals, Google promised to develop tools to better police and remove ads from content that attacks people based on their race, gender, religion or “similar categories.” To do so, […]

by Allison Schiff, Alison Weissbrot, Sarah Sluis, James Hercher, Kelly Liyakasa and Ryan Joe Programmatic advertising comes in many flavors. A handful of brands load up to take their buying fully in-house. Many give their agency partners carte blanche. Other brands take ownership of the tech contracts and segmentation, while letting their agencies pull the […]

Hotel and travel brands are looking to pour more performance dollars into Facebook. For years, hotel operators have used the social platform as a source of online check-ins, reviews and customer service responses, but “the next step was taking it to advertising,” said Chris Georgas, digital marketing manager for Fairmont Hotels. After debuting its Dynamic […]

As consumer attention continues to fragment, creative agencies are relying more on real-time insights to craft personalized messages and optimize them on the fly. That requires bringing media and creative services closer together. While smaller indie shops are bringing media execution in-house to make messaging more relevant, holding companies experiment with cross-discipline and cross-agency teams. […]

Speaking Thursday at the ANA Media Conference, Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard was pleased that Facebook and Google had agreed to independent MRC audits, but he emphasized that the audits are only the first steps toward improving the media supply chain. “It’s not enough to accept [audit pledges] until the audits are […]

Marla Kaplowitz, named president and CEO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) on Friday, has made mending fences with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) a top priority. Addressing the rift between the two organizations – and, more broadly, between marketers and agencies themselves – over agency transparency has “got to happen this […]

Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ (NCS) original value prop focused on connecting media consumption with in-store sales for CPG brands. But in the past two years, NCS has moved beyond attribution and into building programmatic audience segments. Programmatic targeting is already almost 25% of NCS’ business, with a revenue goal this year between $20 million and $25 […]

Product placements aren’t new, but with the rise of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services – and a reduction in cable networks’ commercial loads – branded TV content is primed to take off. That said, it’s hard to credit a sale of a bucket of KFC chicken to Jimmy Kimmel peddling it on his late-night show, so one company […]

Since iCrossing entered the market as a search agency in 1998, digital spend has expanded to social, display and mobile, all of which are table stakes. As a result, iCrossing expanded into a full-service agency, eventually getting acquired by Hearst in 2010. Since then, it’s snagged AOR accounts for clients like Bayer, Church and Dwight and […]

Pinterest introduced its first search ad offering Wednesday, almost seven years after the company launched. “Now we believe we’re at a place where we understand how people are leveraging the platform and using it to plan their lives,” said Michael Akkerman, head of Pinterest’s marketing partners program. The new search functionality comes via Kenshoo, an […]

P&G isn’t going to give digital a free pass anymore. Its agencies, ad tech partners and publishers must enable viewability and third-party measurement and root out fraud. Contracts must be transparent. And if they don’t? P&G will pull media spend. According to its 2016 financial report, P&G spent $7.2 billion on advertising last year. “We […]

Advertisers will focus less on quantity and more on quality over the next five years. That shift in how they spend their marketing budgets will change the role programmatic – and media agencies – play in the marketing ecosystem. “The days of buying volume are going to reach a point of obsolescence,” said Forrester principal […]

Make no mistake about it: Accenture Interactive is here to eat the agency’s lunch. “Our clients asked us to get in this business,” said Glen Hartman, Accenture Interactive managing director for North America, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on Wednesday. Clients are starting to look for “nontraditional service providers” that can tie multiple threads together. That […]

CES has always been about TV, and 2017 was no exception. Displays got a whole lot sharper and devices got a whole lot thinner. But the TV advancements most relevant to marketers and advertisers revolve not around the hardware but the software, which enables addressable ads and better measurement. To be fair, CES isn’t exactly […]

GroupM exec John Montgomery has been to CES for nearly a decade, but this is his first year attending as EVP of global brand safety. So what’s a brand safety guy doing at a consumer electronics show? “To understand brand safety, I need to understand where media is going, particularly new data innovations,” he said. […]

Jim Butler, president of the Dentsu Aegis digital agency Isobar US, is ready to hit the CES showroom floor even though, at the time of this interview, it hadn’t opened yet. It’s his first pilgrimage to CES, and much of what will be displayed at the Las Vegas Convention Center falls into both personal and […]

Advertising trade groups are seizing the political moment in a bid to dismantle the Federal Communications Commission’s recently passed broadband consumer privacy laws. With the commission on the cusp of a Republican majority – Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he’ll step down on inauguration day – the writing could be on the wall for the FCC’s […]

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which officially kicks off Thursday, is fundamentally a hardware show. It’s a sprawl of new toys that consumers will either really want (drones!) or want not at all (3-D TVs!). “One needs to be careful about CES, as there are a lot of things on display and aren’t relevant for […]

Has performance-based pay finally arrived for agencies? Traditionally, marketing services firms were paid on a set scope of billable hours worked by each employee on an account. But a growing number of advertisers are pushing for more tangible, ROI-based remuneration. The biggest recent example is McDonald’s. The quick-serve advertiser’s RFP process specified that agency compensation […]

Boxed, a bulk shopping startup that competes with Costco and Sam’s Club, wants to woo a younger demographic of shoppers to its version of the wholesale club. The three-year-old company is on a hiring spree and expects revenues to exceed $100 million this year. Now Boxed is dabbling in brand marketing for the first time […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a stringent set of online privacy regulations on Thursday. The law, expected to go into effect next year, expands the FCC’s mandate over internet service providers (ISPs), which will soon have to obtain individual consent to use data drawn from a subscriber’s activity, such as web browsing, app usage […]

Just weeks after acquiring HookLogic for $250 million in an all-cash deal, Criteo is pushing into paid search. Criteo played primarily in performance display until now, but its Predictive Search product marks its first major move into a different part of the marketing funnel. It’s a $33.2 billion market that’s dominated by Google, whose Shopping […]

For a CMO, convincing the CEO or CRO to put more money toward marketing is a tall order. Because it’s difficult for marketing to prove ROI, large organizations often squeeze the budget. That’s changing. When Denise Karkos became CMO of TD Ameritrade, she told her board upfront that she planned to invest in data, analytics […]