In today’s newsletter: Bidstack’s executive leadership buys the company back from investors; S4 Capital could be vulnerable to a hostile takeover; and Meta experiences yet another overspending glitch.
In today’s newsletter: Ad tech data can compromise Americans; Reddit has a hard road ahead revenue wise; CTV ad-buying startup tvScientific raises a funding round.
Crunchtime The EU’s Digital Markets Act has teeth – and now it’s biting, TechCrunch reports. The DMA regulates anti-competitive practices within “gatekeeper platforms” that have an annual turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros. Meta, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and ByteDance all tick that box. Gatekeepers have until March to ensure their operations in the EU […]
When the economy is good, advertisers spend on branding. But that’s not the case when times are lean, Sir Martin Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, told AdExchanger. Serious economic headwinds and inflation, plus ongoing international conflicts, all impact advertising spend, and that means companies need to get choosier about their tech investments to keep […]
Media.Monks, S4 Capital’s content, data and media arm, is going big on Salesforce. On Wednesday, Media.Monks merged with Maverick Digital, a 50-person Salesforce consulting and implementation firm with a presence in North America and India. The deal price was not disclosed. Maverick Digital, whose clients include UFC Gym, Mercy Health and the Chicago Blackhawks hockey […]
MightyHive, the programmatic and data arm under S4 Capital, said Tuesday it has merged with data and analytics firm Digodat in Latin America. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Digodat has more than 40 employees and offices in Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Colombia. The firm expands MightyHive’s Latin American presence beyond Brazil, where it […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. YouTube Flexes YouTube represents a quarter of all AVOD and SVOD viewership in the United States, growing 80% year over year, per Comscore. Among ad-supported services, YouTube has the highest reach and streaming hours, the company said in a blog post. Time spent watching […]
Sir Martin Sorrell thinks the term “social distancing” could use a rebrand, since we’re actually communicating more than ever, albeit virtually. “I think social distancing is not the right way of putting it,” he says. “It’s physical distancing.” As founder and CEO of S4 Capital, Sir Martin is keeping an eye on his 2,500 employees […]
If there’s one thing that gets Martin Sorrell’s goat, it’s the accusation that he doesn’t care about creativity. “People say I’m a bean counter or an accountant, and I don’t mind that, they’re just having a dig,” said Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, the digital-focused holding company upstart he founded on his exit from […]
S4 Capital, Martin Sorrell’s scrappy new holding company, acquired Mexico City-based multicultural digital content agency, Circus Marketing, on Wednesday – its 11th deal in just over a year. Here’s why: an expanded footprint, more capacity in existing markets and data, data, data. “It’s a smart deal that makes sense for their strategy,” said Jay Pattisall, a […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. China Who? TikTok wants to distance itself from its Chinese ownership as it faces scrutiny from US lawmakers and regulators. Its senior-most executive, Alex Zhu, gave an interview to The New York Times, dismissing concerns that the social app could help China spy on […]
Martin Sorrell has harsh words for his successor at WPP Group. During a wide-ranging interview on this week’s AdExchanger Talks podcast, Sorrell sharply questions decisions made by WPP’s current leadership in the year since he abdicated to start his own holding company, S4 Capital. He suggests WPP brass have executed poorly on a well-intentioned strategy […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Network To Get Work A+E is taking a two-pronged approach with its new TV measurement products. A campaign reporting feature called P1 is meant to onboard smaller businesses and direct-to-consumer startups, which hunger for attribution data and want to test TV with relatively low […]
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 […]
Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital acquired the programmatic agency MightyHive last December to marry hands-on-keyboard expertise with dynamic creative expertise from MediaMonks. The acquisition kicked off a formal working relationship between S4 CEO Sorrell and MightyHive CEO Pete Kim – who are bonding over their similar Type A personalities. Sorrell’s reputation for all-hours emails and constant […]
After weeks of speculation, S4 Capital said Tuesday it will merge with programmatic agency MightyHive. S4, launched by former WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, will pay $150 million for MightyHive. The agency’s revenues grew 129% at a compound annual growth rate between 2015 and 2017. Revenues for the first nine months of 2018 were $40.7 million, […]
Martin Sorrell’s self-proclaimed “peanut” of a holding company has officially graduated to a coconut. S4 Capital reported its first-ever earnings as a public company Wednesday, following its reverse takeover of Derriston Capital in April. Q3 revenue grew 45% to $33 million and rose 48% to $94 million for the first nine months of the year. […]
Martin Sorrell is bullish on Amazon. The platform will eventually reach $100 billion in ad spend, Sorrell, the CEO of S4 Capital and former WPP honcho, predicted Tuesday at AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO in New York City. He did not mention a timeline. In Amazon’s Q3 earnings in July, the company said it brought in $2.5 […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Zuck Abides Readers might be forgiven for thinking this has been a brutal year for Facebook, given the long string of scandals and investigations the company has faced. But in some important ways, Facebook is humming along as smoothly as ever, according to […]
