Month: October 2024

It’s shaping up to be a bigger and better year for ad spending in 2024. The U.S. presidential election is boosting political spending, and other key factors like retail media, social video, sports programming and streaming are adding fuel to the economy.  

Major ad forecasters have predicted improved U.S. media spend totals for 2024, citing better business conditions. IPG’s Magna Global, which issues quarterly ad-spend forecasts, said in September that it expects the U.S. ad market to total $377 billion this year, an improvement of 11.4% year over year. Forrester’s 2024 forecast cited 6.6% growth this year to $357.3 billion.

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As the gaming industry embraces the live-service model, some publishers are baking film and TV adaptations into their business plans from the start to help extend the lifespan — and revenue-generating potential — of their top titles.

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s official messaging around the game “Ghost of Yotei,” whose first official trailer came out on September 24, made it clear that the game is intended to kick off a new media franchise for the company, replete with its own film and TV adaptations.

Sony’s approach to “Ghost of Yotei” represents a departure from the way video game publishers have traditionally adapted their most popular games into other forms of media. Although game adaptations such as the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “The Last of Us” have achieved great success in recent years, they were adaptations of proven properties with years of devoted fandom.

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CMOs are once again grappling with the age old question of their role in the C-suite. The job has gotten more difficult in today’s business landscape as marketers face increasing pressure to tie marketing to business results (all while being asked to do more with less money). In some cases over the last few months, companies like Hyundai and Starbucks, have eliminated the CMO role entirely.

The role with all of its changes can be challenging, but Jackie Jantos, CMO of Hinge dating app, says it’s a challenge she welcomes, pushing back on short-term metrics in favor of long-term brand building. 

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As the craft and science of marketing continues to be plagued by fragmentation and sharply reduced budgets, brand marketers are increasingly more receptive to alternative advertising options to reach consumers.

Those marketers are investing in “nontraditional formats,” explained Evan Giordano, strategist at Mother New York, with the hopes of creating moments in culture that consumers actually notice rather than ignore or worse, actively block.

These formats can range from PR activations (one recent example: Progressive’s brand mascot Dr. Rick became the first brand mascot to appear on the talk show Hot Ones) to long-form content to unusual brand activations (remember the hubbub around the Pop Tart bowl earlier this year?) to packaging innovation and other uncommon efforts. 

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Today’s marketers are facing increasing pressure to tie marketing into business performance, catching them between two often conflicting priorities: brand storytelling and performance marketing. 

Lately, that conversation has been bubbling up among marketers, becoming a talking point on at least three panels on Monday at this year’s Advertising Week conference in New York. 

The debate of brand versus performance dates back to even before the advent of Advertising Week, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, according to Advertising Week co-founder and CEO Lance Pillersdorf. It’s a timely topic at this year’s event given a hodgepodge of new media channels, like streaming ads, and economic headwinds constricting marketing budgets and shifts in technology, like generative AI, which has promised to spur creativity more quickly than ever, according to marketers and agency executives.

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A growing consensus in ad circles: The Trade Desk is veering dangerously close to “bad actor” territory.

If this rising unease had a name, it would be “TTD’s Dominance Distress Trauma (DDT)” — a growing fear that the ad tech powerhouse’s influence is pushing the industry into dangerous waters. 

And bit by bit, the evidence of this anxiety is beginning to pile up, as recently reported by Adexchanger.

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With another Advertising Week well underway, Omnicom Media Group continues to work behind the scenes to address systemic issues around the more opaque processes in digital investment. 

The Omnicom-owned media agency network already set its sights on the ad auction process, working in conjunction with a host of industry organizations and auction firms to help the beginning work to establish standards in the $600 billion ad auction marketplace. Now it’s drilling even deeper into auctions and how AI is applied, Digiday has learned.

OMG’s AI Buying Agent standardization initiative aims to ensure advertisers’ interests are kept in mind when platforms create their automated ad product algorithms, which are more autonomous in their decision-making. OMG’s self-described first-to-market initiative seeks to set standards by working with the major platforms — the ask is to get their help in doing a baseline assessment by filling out a questionnaire (sent in September), assess their level of compliance, and then accelerate and advance adoption and adherence.

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Compare the female president in DKNY’s “In Women We Trust,” to Kamala Harris, and the 1993 campaign seems eerily prescient.

Top of the Ticker: Monday marked the one year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel. The broadcast, cable and streaming news outlets marked the occasion by reporting from the region as the tentacles of the war continue to spread throughout the Middle East. Last week, NBC News Now premiered the documentary, Freed: One…

It’s the first day of Advertising Week, and Netflix wants to deliver knockout partnerships for its upcoming Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight. Top line The streaming service and Most Valuable Promotions have now partnered with Celsius, DraftKings Sportsbook, Experian, Meta Quest, and Spaten (Brazil) as presenting sponsors for the live event, which takes place…