In today’s newsletter: Brands risk having their organic sales counted as paid conversion conversions on multiple platforms; Facebook’s Project Ghostbusters spied on Snap, YouTube and Amazon; and DTC brands bow out of brick-and-mortar.
Brands are pumped about the connected TV opportunity. But without the ability to measure campaigns with the same level of granularity as they can on digital channels, “CTV is not quite as fun as we want it to be,” said Scott Symonds, a managing partner at WPP digital agency AKQA. “A high-attention platform like you […]
Brand marketing is starting to get more measurable, and budgets are beginning to follow. Adidas, Topshop and others have been vocal about the need to spend more on brand building, and DTC brands also want scale beyond digital – but that doesn’t mean blindly tossing money into TV and hoping for brand lift. “Digital isn’t the […]
Is the union between Oracle and BlueKai, in the words of Ovum Research Senior Analyst Gerry Brown, a case of “the cat amongst the pigeons?” There might be some credence to the idea. As Brown points out, BlueKai is (or has been) a champion of open systems. Oracle is not. “Certainly few BlueKai partners will […]
After a relatively quiet period following its acquisition by WPP Group for $540 million last year, AKQA’s executives popped up in New York on Friday to deliver what the digital agency described as an “experiment” in reaching out to clients and the media. “We wanted to give back to our customers by sharing with them […]
Late last week Facebook released Premium Ad inventory to its self-serve and Ads API channels. By doing so, it intends to relieve the burden of selling these ad types solely from its direct sales force and make them more widely available. But the eventual impact of the move could be more complicated. For instance, from […]
As AKQA’s media team stares into the maw of WPP and its Xaxis audience buying unit, what does it see there? Scott Symonds, Managing Director of AKQA Media, is certainly aware of Xaxis’s reputation as the most controlling of the holding company trading desks – an entity that has been known to force its solution […]
The acquisition of AKQA, the largest remaining independent interactive agency, by WPP sent waves through the ad sector today. Read: the French Riviera was buzzin’. Numerous senior agency people attending the Cannes Lions global ad festival have either worked for AKQA or competed with it dating back to its founding in 2001. The deal was […]
WPP Group has added digital agency AKQA to its holding company corral as the digital, pure play agency remains a highly-sought-after prize. Read the release. It was rumored that AKQA would be acquired by Dentsu for $600 million in 2010. Though today’s acquisition did not include terms of the deal, and considering time has passed […]
Scott Symonds is General Manager of AKQA Media, Search & Analytics. AdExchanger.com: Are ad exchanges a part of digital media buying strategy at AKQA? Do you have plans for a media buying platform either in-house or outsourced? SS: We are not using ad exchanges currently but would like to as we build our performance media […]
