Month: December 2023

2024 will be a major year for advertising as the U.S. presidential election boosts political spending. Media agencies also anticipate other key drivers to fuel the ad economy, including retail media, digital, sports and connected TV.

This week, Dentsu, GroupM, IPG’s Magna all released their 2024 advertising predictions and forecasts — with global ad spend estimates ranging from 4% to 7% in growth for 2024. And despite lingering economic uncertainty, the agency holding companies and their clients are staying positive during the holidays and feeling confident with cooling inflation.

Here are some highlights and comparisons from each of the agency reports.

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Rapid developments in artificial intelligence have led to a lot of new AI brand names. From dusty to droll to deft, some follow well trodden paths of past tech trends. Others might make complexities of AI easier for humans to process.

On Wednesday, Google added another AI name to the already crowded field: Gemini. The new AI model — which will power a range of Google products — also caps a year full of new AI startups, products and entire platforms with noteworthy or unusual names. Without explaining where the name came from, Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted a video about Gemini and quipped on X about “seeing some qs on what Gemini *is* (beyond the zodiac sign).”

Since ChatGPT became a breakout hit, names of numerous AI companies and products have entered the cultural vernacular from startups and giants alike. In addition to ChatGPT, the new wave of chatbots — including Google’s Bard, Anthropic’s Claude, Inflection’s Pi, Quora’s Poe and Amazon’s Q — have cultivated curiosity around how humans interact with AI. At Microsoft, a whole brand has been built around its AI assistant Copilot, which celebrated its one-year anniversary this week not long after bringing Bing Chat under the rebranded Copilot umbrella. Meanwhile, creatives in various fields have experienced the power of new AI tools for generating text, photos and video through platforms like Adobe Firefly and Canva’s Magic Studio, as well as from startups like Jasper, Midjourney and Runway.

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The future of video advertising may be connected video, but some brands aren’t ready to jettison linear television from their media mixes just yet.

Linear’s value is its broad reach and storytelling capabilities, and that’s why 23andMe, a biotechnology company known for its ancestry tests, has returned to broadcast advertising after a brief hiatus last year, according to Tracy Keim, the company’s chief brand officer.

“One of the main reasons was the stories that we keep getting [from customers for the campaign] are so overwhelmingly unbelievable that we felt like getting them out on digital and in social wasn’t enough,” Keim said, referring to the company’s return to storytelling via linear broadcast for its latest campaign.

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Naming new companies and new products in new categories is something Lexicon CEO and Founder David Placek has done for decades. His agency, founded more than 40 years ago, has come up with numerous brands’ brand names that evolved from novel to iconic.

Lexicon’s list includes Pentium and Powerbook, but it’s also the brain behind Blackberry, Sonos, Azure and Oculus Go. Beyond tech, it’s also come up with car names including Outback and Forrester for Subaru and EVs like the Lucid. It also came up numerous other names including the Impossible Burger and Embassy Suites along with Swiffer and Febreze.

As the world grows its own AI lexicon, Digiday spoke with Placek to talk about the the emerging category, what makes a good name and current trends in AI names. (He also mentioned Lexicon is currently working with three AI startups, but staying away from anything anthropomorphic.)

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Future plc’s chief financial and strategy officer Penny Ladkin-Brand announced yesterday that she is stepping down from the company’s board next year, after eight years at the media company.

Her announcement comes as the U.K.-based media company reported $993.3 million (or £788.9 million) of overall revenue in 2023, down 4% year over year, according to its full-year earnings announced on Thursday.

As a result, CEO Jon Steinberg unveiled a new plan to get the company back on track, by investing about $31.5 million to $37.8 million (or £25 million to £30 million) into Future over the course of the next two years.

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Gov. Greg Abbott starts endorsing challengers against ESA opponents.

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are warning the GOP that a second term will fail.

He attacks Chevron while China keeps building coal plants.

If Congress forces Kyiv to accept a Russian victory, the result won’t be peace but a new war.

A common thread ties his case to others in Russia, Iran and other tyrannical states.