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.
So you’ve made it to the final day of Advertising Week in New York City. Congratulations.
This year, the annual shindig crammed its attendees into a multiplex near Lincoln Center, one of the last Upper West Side movie theaters that still takes MoviePass.
While previous Advertising Weeks had themes like “storytelling,” there is no theme this year because apparently there’s just too much to talk about. Still, as ad execs wend their way up and down the escalators and through the cinderblock bowels of the cinema, they’re all searching for something similar: quality, transparency and truth in measurement.
Those traits are easier described than found.
Just ask Nielsen – which the AdExchanger team discusses on this week’s “The Big Story.” Nielsen’s panel-based measurement once seemed like the final say, but it has since fallen on hard times, with rumblings of a sale – thanks to the machinations of activist investor Elliott Management.
Senior editor Rae Paoletta took a long look at the problems that led Nielsen to this point – sluggish innovation for both its Buy and Watch businesses, a tremendous amount of debt – to get a sense of the company’s ultimate direction.
Meanwhile, Index Exchange’s competitors are calling foul about its header-bidding wrapper practices. Is this a team-up of rivals trying to knock one of the top supply-side players down a notch, or are they genuinely shining a light on some unfair practices? Or maybe a little of both?
Untangling this web is senior editor Sarah Sluis. Intimidated? Don’t be. The AdExchanger team will discuss what exactly is going on and who’s alleged to have done what and why, in language so plainspoken that you’ll be able to recount it to your 5-year-old before bedtime.
Tune in to this week’s episode of “The Big Story” as we unpack the issues that might have left you scratching your head – and come away not just educated, but entertained as well.
