WPP

Sonos’s woes ding The Trade Desk; WPP’s AI investments may not keep Coke from switching to Publicis; and feminized Swedish tobacco products find an audience in the US manosphere.

Pinterest is being overrun with low-effort generative AI slop. Plus, Stagwell partially credits its 14% growth last year to – you guessed it – AI.

WPP shares dipped to a four-year low on after posting its 2024 earnings results. Plus: How brands are courting virality.

Enjoy this weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

DirecTV expanded its stake in addressable TV ad platform Invidi on Wednesday. It’s now the majority owner.

Mohegan and LiveRamp partner on a “casino media network;” Criteo hires its new CEO from the agency side; and Publicis Groupe consolidates

IPG buying Node continues the trend of agencies trying new business models; IPG and Publicis support principal-based buying while WPP opposes it; and billionaire owners believe controlling their newsrooms will win back public trust.

Mediaocean has a new certified partner program. Plus, Google’s “site reputation abuse” search update is cratering publisher affiliate revenue during the year’s busiest shopping season.

Publicis outperforms its agency holding company rivals because of three primary factors: technology strategy, leadership and deal-making.

Can Netflix do live programming? Plus, efficiency gains from generative AI are causing some ad agencies to rethink how they bill clients.

Move over, Mr. Met — it’s Grimace’s time to shine. Plus, Zeta Global has acquired email marketing and identity company LiveIntent for $250 million.

Ranjana Choudhry has spent decades on the buy and sell side. Now, she’s getting into ad tech. AdExchanger spoke with Choudhry about her new role and about her side hustle training the next generation of marketers.

Shares of WPP took another thumping yesterday. Plus, advertisers are getting post-lawsuit cold feet about X all over again.

Advertising is still Reddit’s meal ticket – but until its ad revenue tops the $2 billion per year mark, it can’t really be considered competitive with other social platforms.

AI-powered systems should make the humans that use them smarter, says WPP CTO Stephan Pretorius. “It has to be people first, not technology first.” Plus: why “technology doesn’t destroy jobs, it destroys tasks.”

If you were wondering whether Brian Lesser was planning to take some time off after handing the CEO reins of InfoSum to Lauren Wetzel last week – here’s your answer.

In today’s newsletter: Brands risk having their organic sales counted as paid conversion conversions on multiple platforms; Facebook’s Project Ghostbusters spied on Snap, YouTube and Amazon; and DTC brands bow out of brick-and-mortar.

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.

AdExchanger consulted with agencies about how they are evaluating new generative AI tools for marketing use cases as well as the tech companies behind these startups breaking new ground in generative AI.

Some marketers failed to heed the warning signs that their relationship with third-party cookies was coming to an end. But the time to move on is now. Fortunately, there are plenty of other addressability solutions in the sea.

IPG struggled in 2023 as tech clients slashed their ad spend and its digital agencies underperformed.

While other holding companies are touting their AI roadmaps, Omnicom is focusing more on a different shiny object: retail and commerce media.

“Standard advertising services” shouldn’t include recording intimate patient-doctor conversations to help drug companies guide doctors on how to push opioids.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Arc Of History The Browser Company is backed by tech elite like Instacart CEO Fidji Simo, Medium founder Ev Williams, Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. TBC makes a browser called Arc, and this week it launched […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Board Games The LG Ads board of directors has three new members. Or, more accurately, two previous board members – Alphonso co-founders Ashish Chordia and Lampros Kalampoukas, who were fired as part of an orchestrated corporate coup in late December 2022 – have […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. AdExchanger is taking the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Our daily news roundup will return on Tues., Jan. 16. The Clean Slate Disney has been talking up its data clean room at CES. It now has 140 demand customers, and […]

GroupM’s integration with Google allows its Choreograph campaign planning and insights platform to compile data derived from Google – including signals from Search, YouTube and Google Analytics – in one interface.

Agencies will keep testing cookie alternatives, devising first-party data strategies and exploring commerce media in 2024.

With support from Google, WPP-owned GroupM announced a new initiative to integrate Privacy Sandbox tests into the media plans of select clients over the coming year.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Location, Location, Location The FTC’s consumer privacy case against Kochava is back on the docket. Last year, the consumer watchdog accused the mobile app analytics platform of selling users’ geolocation data in an open market. However, the presiding judge threw out the FTC’s […]