Home The Big Story The Big Story: The Strange Case Of The Vanishing Media Agencies

The Big Story: The Strange Case Of The Vanishing Media Agencies

SHARE:
The Big Story podcast

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

The temperature is cooling, the leaves are falling and the skies are turning the color of slate.

It’s a time for mystery.

This week on “The Big Story,” the team investigates the baffling situation of the missing media agencies.

The cross-continental trail begins at the annual DMEXCO conference in Cologne, Germany, where AdExchanger editor Rae Paoletta searches for the buy side, but mostly finds vendors and “sellers talking to sellers.”

What happened in DMEXCO? Who was there? What did they see? Following a contentious divorce last year between the conference organizer and its founders, the event seems to be shrinking, becoming less international and more focused on the interests of its native Germany.

Back Stateside, editor Alison Weissbrot digs into Forrester’s Global Media Agency Wave and its eerie conclusion: The media agencies are dying.

The AdExchanger team tries to reconcile that strong language and interrogates the suspects: the encroachment of consultancies into agency territory and brands taking their programmatic media buying in-house.

And because there can’t be a Forrester Wave without a ranking, the team also dives deep into who came out on top, and why.

Tagged in:

Must Read

Upfronts Day Two: Dancing And Data

TelevisaUnivision and Disney took over Day Two of upfronts week in New York City on Tuesday, and the throughline was data quality.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Upfront Was All About Performance

Warner Bros. Discovery used its upfront stage to announce two new ad measurement efforts, including that it’s joining a CAPI-focused initiative led by OpenAP.

Upfronts Day One: Publishers Jostle For Position As Performance Drivers

AdExchanger Senior Editor Alyssa Boyle and Associate Editor Victoria McNally traversed the island of Manhattan on Monday to scope out upfront presentations by NBCUniversal, Fox and Amazon.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Viant Sees A Growth Wave Coming, But First Marketers Must Really Ditch Walled Garden Ad Tech

Viant’s modest growth story took a backseat to a far louder claim: that fed-up advertisers are finally ready to ditch the rigged economics of Big Tech’s walled gardens.

Amazon’s Interactive CTV Ad Suite Now Includes Creative Optimization

Amazon Ads expects this year’s television upfronts to be an outcomes-focused affair. That may explain why the company preempted its Monday evening presentation by announcing the launch of a new ad product called Dynamic TV Creative.

Is Agentic Commerce An Oasis Or Mirage?

For companies like Shopify, Criteo and Instacart – and even for giants like Amazon and Walmart – figuring out if the agentic oasis is real or a mirage is their priority No. 1.