Martin Sorrell Talks AmEx; IAB-PWC Ad Spend Report

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Sorrell On AMEX

LinkedIn’s Dan Roth assumes the role of interviewer in a conversation with WPP Group chief Martin Sorrell for a piece on Linkedin. Sorrell comments on American Express, saying it’s going 100% programmatic (which AMEX walked back a bit): “The financial services companies tend to be amongst the most sophisticated in the use of online and digital and John Hayes who’s the CMO of AmEx has been in the forefront along with Ken Chenault, the CEO, of building their reputation online – not just in programmatic buying but in understanding the importance of targeting.” Read more.

OMG! Spend

A new IAB-sponsored study by PricewaterhouseCoopers says Internet ad spend in the U.S. continued to rocket in early 2014. From the release: “Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. reached $11.6 billion for the first quarter of 2014, marking a 19 percent increase over the same period in 2013. … This is an historic first-quarter high and a significant increase over last year’s first-quarter revenue level, which was record-setting at $9.6 billion.” Read it.

Mobile Meld

Millennial Media CEO Michael Barrett reached back to his Admeld days for Millennial’s latest hire. Millennial on Wednesday announced Google mobile exec Marc Theerman, who was part of Admeld before Google bought it in 2011, would become EVP of business strategy. Theerman’s canned quote in the release was vague as to what he’ll be doing: “As we are at another inflection point in mobile – between programmatic, native advertising and brand – Millennial Media is well positioned in those areas…” Read more. Hmm… In 2013, Theerman was more decisive on the future from his personal blog: “24 months from now, the majority of all impressions will come from mobile operating systems. RTB is the only efficient way to match buyers to sellers in this exponentially growing universe.” Boom-shocka-locka-locka.

Buying Location Data

Nokia may own consumer handsets, but it apparently wants to tighten up its location services (a.k.a. targeting) capabilities with its acquisition of Medio Systems. TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden reports, “Medio, based out of Seattle, was founded in 2004, originally setting out to develop a contextualised search engine for mobile phone users but later pivoting to provide a more B2B product, in the form of analytics, predictive modelling, and push marketing based on a company’s users’ data.” Read it.

Negative Space Ads

Reporter Steven Perlberg explores whether consumers would be willing to pay for ads free television in The Wall Street Journal. Perlberg admits, “There’s one big flaw with this idea, of course: the current bundling of TV networks in pay TV subscriptions. Because consumers don’t pay individually for channels, pricing channels on an ad-free basis would be complicated.” Read it. This isn’t a new concept as media and marketing tech companies look to the negative space of ads for revenue opportunities. For example, SpotXchange started SkipIt a couple of years ago – a service for skipping online video ads.

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Brian Jacobs On Fraud

In a blog post for MyersBizNet detailing the road from fraud to ad collaboration, ad industry veteran Brian Jacobs, a partner at consulting firm Optisca, predicts that the tipping point will arrive “when the first client of a large holding company not only decides to resist the lure of the holding company’s trading desk but gets so thoroughly disenchanted and annoyed by the lack of transparency and basic honesty on show that he fires the holding company’s media planning agency, creative agency and every other agency owned by the offending holding company and goes instead for a different approach, maybe even going down the bespoke, independent route.” Read more.

TV Advertising To Keep The Lead

TV ad spend will outpace digital video six to one in 2018 despite digital video advertising’s rapid growth, according to an eMarketer report released Thursday. By year’s end, digital video spend will increase 41.9% to $5.96 billion and TV advertising will increase 3.3% to $68.54 billion. EMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman says, “Time spent with digital video is growing significantly, and it’s taking away some TV time, but given the diversity of placements and platforms, digital video viewers are more difficult for advertisers to target.” Read the report.

Programmatically Engaged

Independent media agency Horizon Media has teamed up with True[X] (formerly SocialVibe) to bring “engagement-based buying” to brand clients. Horizon’s agency trading desk will tap True[X]’s exchange to build internally what the company has heralded as an engagement-based buying practice. “It appears to be the first time [where engagement metrics – such as video views, social media likes/shares, clicks, submitted survey forms, etc.] will be used as the linchpin for programmatic pricing,” says AdWeek. Readmore.

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