WPP Bets On Amazon; It's Also Still Fighting The Malware Attack

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Amazon Guides

The marketing world is still debating who could be the next contender to the duopoly, but WPP is clearly placing its bets on Amazon. Media agency Mindshare and performance marketing agency Possible are offering clients a shared media and ecommerce solution “across the entire Amazon ecosystem,” Adweek reports. Amazon-exclusive services will include media planning and buying, ecommerce optimization, analytics, services around “innovative” products like Dash and Alexa and a unit focused on Amazon Prime. Capabilities for the service will come from Marketplace Ignition, the Amazon-focused consultancy WPP acquired in May. “We want to provide an end-to-end solution from awareness to sale,” said Joe Migliozzi, head of Mindshare’s Shop+ division in North America. More.

Sir Martin’s Ransom

As of EOD Wednesday, WPP is still crippled from a cyberattack that hit businesses across the US, Europe and Latin American on Tuesday. The malware, dubbed Petya, sent devices across WPP’s 200,000-person network into lockdown with a ransom of 300 bitcoin per device. “Although some of our operations continue to be affected … steady progress is being made towards restoring normal service across the Group,” WPP CEO Martin Sorrell wrote in a note to employees. “There is no indication in any of our companies that either employee or client data has been compromised.” Ninety percent of such attacks are money grabs, but there’s a chance it obscures something more sinister, like transferring money outside of the organization or covering a data breach, Jeff Pollard, principal analyst at Forrester, told Ad Age. More than once in the financial services industry, an attack of this ilk “was actually a smoke screen for something else, he said.” More.

MRC, BRB

Over the next several months, the MRC will complete an audit of the integrations between YouTube’s measurement platform and its third-party measurement vendors: DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science and Moat. Google agreed to the YouTube audit, the first ever for the video platform, in February [AdExchanger coverage]. Each of the three vendors has separate MRC accreditation, but not for their integrations with YouTube. “The audit will include an examination of the collection and processing of data that is fed to third-party measurement vendors,” writes MRC senior VP David Gunzerath. The audit will also assess ingestion and reporting for the data feed between YouTube and its vendors.

Apple Courts Publishers

Axios has been publishing to Apple News since February, but only just began monetizing its content there because Apple previously only offered banner ads, which Axios doesn’t have on its site. So Apple put together a custom, in-feed native unit for Axios that mimics the site’s style and scrolling feature. “The future of being a platform is giving publishers a way of replicating their unique experience on the platform,” Axios President Roy Schwartz told Digiday. More.

But Wait, There’s More!