Musk’s promises to overhaul Twitter’s content moderation and user verification policies have caused brands and agencies to rethink their budgetary commitments to the platform. Plus, Musk’s seemingly disingenuous tone shift on advertising and his tweeting of fake news may make brands more inclined to pull budgets from a platform that was never seen as a must-buy anyway.
Programmatic is a journey – and most advertisers need a copilot. But the advice they get is often too narrowly focused on tactics, like programmatic ad buying and supply-path optimization (SPO), rather than on auction dynamics across all biddable media, said Rob Norman, former chief digital officer at GroupM and a strategic advisor to Up & […]
Kraft-Heinz’s $15 billion write-down on Kraft and Oscar Meyer last week shows that underinvesting in marketing and brand hurts long-term growth. “It indicates investment in innovation and branding is essential,” said Martin Sorrell, CEO of S4 Capital. “In addition to being frugal, you have to invest in product or service innovation and marketing. You’re throwing […]
Agencies are dying? Don’t tell that to Rob Norman, chief digital officer and veteran of WPP’s GroupM, who said Monday he will step down from his full-time role to become a part-time adviser for the company. But even if agencies aren’t having a near-death experience, they should behave like they are, Norman said: “If you […]
Digital captured 72 cents of every new ad dollar in 2016, compared with TV’s 21 cents, according to GroupM’s Interaction report. In 2017, the report estimated, the ratio will be 77:17. But as digital becomes ubiquitous, so do concerns around data and compliance in a totally connected world. 2016 “was an alarming year for the […]
Any publisher who is not a big platform company is on the express train to becoming a niche ads business, predicts Meredith Kopit Levien, EVP and CRO of The New York Times. “Up until now, we’ve been a niche consumer business with a $1 billion-plus newspaper ad business,” Kopit Levien said, speaking Thursday at AdExchanger’s […]
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 […]
Agency buyers believe Snapchat’s partner program, which allows third parties to buy inventory, will help the messaging service migrate from a bespoke buy to a more central part of a media plan. “If you look at the scale and daily time spent, especially among millennials, you have to consider Snapchat a core reach vehicle,” said […]
In its critical agency report, The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) didnt touch on the complexities of the modern media-buying landscape, said Rob Norman, chief digital officer of WPP’s media-buying arm GroupM, in a blog post Tuesday. Norman’s response comes after the ANA mic-dropped its investigative report into agency transparency, criticizing agencies for taking rebates and a […]
Digital holds a 29.3% share of all media investment in the United States, up from 28% last quarter, according to GroupM’s annual Interaction 2016 report, which aggregates insights from the agency’s digital advertising activities and was released on Monday. GroupM focused its findings around four core issues related to the growth of mobile: the difficulty […]
Rob Norman will speak at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference, taking place in New York on January 20-21. If you were forced to name one media buying entity that sets the agenda for the rest of the industry, it would have to be WPP-owned GroupM. It was GroupM – umbrella to Mindshare, MEC, Xaxis and Essence […]
Rob Norman, GroupM’s global chief digital officer, foresees a future without fragmentation. He also expects more walled gardens, although “walled” won’t necessarily mean “closed.” Speaking on Thursday at DMEXCO in Germany, Norman outlined how agencies and advertisers will adapt to the rise of a handful of major consumer platforms and applications. “When you think about […]
The old thinking: social media channels like Facebook and Twitter will be the death knell of traditional publishers. The new thinking: they need each other desperately. And just maybe, they can actually generate a worthwhile amount of ad dollars and audience engagement through mutual benefit. That was the consensus at the opening panel of the […]
As often happens with ad industry events, the ANA’s Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando has a front channel and a back channel. On the front channel, speakers are tackling big creative and consumer themes like the rise of cause marketing, “social by design,” and brands as content creators. On the back channel digitally focused attendees […]
Rob Norman is CEO of of North American operations for GroupM, the parent organization for WPP Group media agencies Maxus, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and Mindshare. Norman sat down with AdExchanger.com during last weekend’s Association of National Advertisers annual meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona. AdExchanger.com: What is happening with the brand marketer and their digital strategy today in […]
