The United States ad market has proven more resilient than anticipated thanks to record political ad spending in the run-up to the 2020 election. Still, US ad spend will decrease 7% this year to $236 billion due to the impacts of COVID-19, according to Zenith’s global ad spend forecast, released on Monday. Without political ad […]
Omnicom mitigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on its business in part by cutting 6,100 jobs across its network in the second quarter, the company said Tuesday during its earnings call. Omnicom also froze hiring, eliminated salary increases, implemented voluntary pay cuts across its agencies and participated in government subsidy programs in 35 markets. […]
Publicis Groupe, after years of struggling in North America, was on its way back to positive performance at the beginning of Q2. Then COVID-19 hit, and organic growth declined 6.8% for the quarter and 3.3% for the first half of the year. “We were really off to a good 2020,” CEO Arthur Sadoun said on […]
After acquiring 10 agencies in the last four years (and seven in the last two), marketing services firm LRW Group is rebranding to Material. Material’s acquisition spree began in 2015, with funding from private equity firm Tailwind Capital. Its purchases include full-service agency T3, customer service agency Strativity and market research firm Kelton. CEO Dave […]
Media agencies are the No. 1 partner that brands are reviewing as COVID-19 rocks their marketing plans. Sixty-three percent of brands are reevaluating their media agencies, according to AdExchanger’s 2020 industry outlook report. That’s compared to 56% of respondents reassessing their data partners, 44% looking at new measurement partners and just 19% reexamining their relationships […]
Havas Media and GroupM each launched curated media marketplaces representing black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ and other minority-owned publishers, as well as publishers that create content specifically for underrepresented communities. Havas Media’s social equity private marketplace, which went live last Friday, represents roughly 250 publishers with minority and LGBTQ+ owners, including Blavity, MadameNoire and Black Enterprise. Moen […]
Supply-path optimization (SPO) has become a selling point for agencies looking to bring value and savings to clients in programmatic. An SPO strategy allows buyers to cut out players in the programmatic supply chain that don’t add value, such as resellers or exchanges that sell only duplicative inventory, while simultaneously funneling more spend toward exchanges […]
The past week has seen a reckoning begin over the content policies – or lack thereof – governing the big media platforms. Major marketers, including Coca-Cola, Unilever and Diageo, are halting spend on social media at least through July. But there’s always the danger than these efforts end up being an exercise in virtue signaling once they’re […]
The holding company MDC Partners was already struggling before COVID-19 decimated the US economy. But a proposed merger by Stagwell Group, first reported by AdAge late Thursday, demonstrates how the pandemic likely accelerated the end of MDC’s run as an independent public company. MDC Partners and Stagwell Group did not respond to requests for […]
The ad market will pay for the United States government’s late lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to GroupM’s midyear global ad spend forecast. The US advertising market will shrink 9.9% this year to $207.3 billion, excluding political ad spend, which will buoy the market by $15 billion in 2020, according to […]
