As automation takes hold of the advertising industry, media planning and buying agencies are being forced to take a cold, hard look in the mirror. “We’re dealing with a lot of forces of commoditization,” MEC CEO Tim Castree told AdExchanger. Castree is in a delicate spot. Following MEC’s merger with sister GroupM agency, Maxus, he’ll […]
As agencies struggle to transform under continued fee pressure from clients, executives are reassessing whether descending on the French Riviera for a week of endless rosé and parties on yachts sends the right message about the state of the industry. “If clients are using zero-based budgeting, let’s use it for Cannes,” WPP CEO Sir Martin […]
For Snap, there are benefits to being a latecomer to ad tech. The app, which entered the programmatic playing field last year when it launched APIs and self-serve tools that allow marketers to place automated buys on its platform, is avoiding many mistakes made by a predecessor that it’s often compared to: Facebook. “Snap has been […]
Snap’s acquisition of location data company Placed, announced Monday, shows the platform is getting serious about attribution. While Snap has robust location data on its 166 million daily active users, Placed’s ID graph, which collects geodata on a panel of 150 million opted-in mobile devices, broadens those insights to people who don’t use Snap and […]
WPP’s media buying unit GroupM said Thursday that it merged media agencies MEC and Maxus to cut costs, since the two agencies have overlapping capabilities. The yet-to-be-named firm drives a billion dollars in revenue and will be led by MEC CEO Tim Castree. “Combining [MEC and Maxus] gives us scale but also flexibility to invest […]
On Saturday, small businesses will get a chance to pitch ideas to a GoDaddy executive and other experts at the SheKnows Media conference. To drive viewers to the live-streamed event, GoDaddy will become the first brand to deploy a programmatic video live-stream ad unit from Traction Labs. The session is part of a sponsorship deal […]
About one year ago, GroupM quietly introduced a new structure designed to consolidate its real-time ad buying capabilities across programmatic, social, search and mobile. Called Connect, the new group appeared to be the WPP-owned media agency network’s answer to the growing need for programmatic decentralization of programmatic buying. We have seen that decentralization play out across […]
One of Google’s themes, when it announced it was dividing its core advertising business from its more experimental endeavors by restructuring into the holding company Alphabet, was “transparency.” Specifically, in the words of Alphabet CEO Larry Page, “improving the transparency and oversight of what we’re doing.” What that means, however, is anyone’s guess. We asked […]
Microsoft isn’t the advertising behemoth it once aspired to be when it purchased aQuantive for $6 billion in 2007. Since then, Microsoft has mostly been a publisher, selling inventory both directly and programmatically across its Microsoft Network (MSN) family of sites, its Outlook email portal, Skype and Xbox. Following the Microsoft-AOL search and display deal, […]
MEC North America’s digital president Shenan Reed is discussing the way her media agency communicates with its sisters in GroupM (“We’re all one big stock ticker symbol and it’s to nobody’s advantage to be competitive with each other”) when her Ringly vibrates. That’s the connected piece of jewelry that perks up when someone receives a call […]
A global consumer packaged-goods giant and specialty automotive company have very different digital aspirations. For toothpaste brand Colgate-Palmolive Co., its target demographic is everyone. “How many teeth exist in the world?” said Jack Haber, VP of global advertising and digital for Colgate-Palmolive Co., during Simulmedia’s Salon series panel event Thursday with MediaLink. “For some brands, […]
SHIFT is among the first Facebook marketing partners to integrate with the newly rebuilt Atlas ad platform. CEO James Borow said the company’s customers will soon be able to leverage Facebook’s data within SHIFT’s new platform to reach people in mobile apps outside of Facebook-owned mobile apps. “The inventory is not just locked within the […]
WPP Group-owned media agency GroupM’s launch Monday of spinoff Modi Media, intended to improve targeted television ads, expands WPP’s authority on addressable and interactive TV tools and services. Michael Bologna, GroupM’s former director of emerging communications who was named as Modi’s president, said Modi will operate as a separate business unit with access to clients […]
WPP Group’s digital and direct marketing agency Wunderman and its media-buying agency MEC have launched a joint venture called CHOREOGRAPH to address converging client demands in paid, earned and owned media. The proliferation of cross-channel marketing campaigns and the subsequent need to marry transactional, customer and demographic data with audience-level information drove CHOREOGRAPH’s creation. “Over […]
“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 Mark Zomick, managing partner of data integration at MEC North America. As the media landscape becomes more fragmented, sophisticated and ROI-driven, the need for clean, complete and accurate data […]
It was three months ago that Jack Bamberger joined GroupM agency MEC as president, digital for North America. He was in some ways an unusual choice, having far more experience on the media than the agency side. Of his last 20 years, 13 were spent at Time Inc., Meredith Corporation, and Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media. […]
