Month: January 2025

If Perplexity wants to make a mark on advertising, Andrew Beck will be one to watch.

As head of business development, he’s been at the forefront of convincing advertisers (so far) to buy in — a task he took on just months before the company began selling ads around its search results.

And what a task it is: leading the AI startup’s bold attempt to challenge Google’s auction-based ad system, where marketers bid for sponsored links against search queries. Instead, Perplexity’s model lets marketers sponsor questions, generating AI-produced answers approved by the advertiser. The twist is its reliance on CPMs over CPCs, an unexpected approach for an AI-powered search engine.

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Several new ad networks joined the bevy of existing (and growing) retail media networks last year with new terminology to match: financial media networks, travel media networks and, as of just last month, the (allegedly) first real estate media network (Re/Max). Ah, 2024, the year that nearly every brand (well, every brand that hadn’t yet done so) realized the potential of an ad network. The thinking seems to go, if everyone else has one — and they’re getting the additional revenue from ad dollars — why shouldn’t my brand have one too?

Re/Max aside, the bulk of 2024 ad network debuts took place during the first half of the year (Chase, Revolut, United Airlines, Expedia, T-Mobile, Costco). The second half was quieter for new entrants (PayPal, Grubhub, Thrive Market), but many of the existing players beefed up their capabilities. Walmart finally finishing its Vizio acquisition was likely the biggest example of this. Could it be that all of the brands that were setting up their ad networks had already done so? Have we finally reached peak ad network?

“While the pace of new ad network launches has slowed, it is unlikely that we have fully reached ‘peak ad network,’” surmised Jim Misener, president of creative consultancy 50,000feet. “Instead, the market is likely entering a phase of consolidation and specialization.”

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Every December, the industry churns out breathless predictions about what’s next in media and advertising. Spoiler alert: most of it won’t happen. 

Unified CTV measurement? Influencers with integrity? Ad tech that’s not a black hole for your budget? Dream on. 

Instead of joining the prediction parade, let’s talk about the things we know won’t materialize in 2025 — because some traditions are just too persistent to break.

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Billy (not his real name) is the kind of senior marketer who usually has a hot take for every occasion. Brand safety? He’ll unravel the industrial complex behind it. Transparency? Buckle up; he’ll spill it all.

However, when it comes to Interpublic Group’s Acxiom, Billy’s take is conspicuously missing. It’s not because he’s uninformed; he just doesn’t think IPG has offered enough answers to form an opinion worth having. 

“It [Acxiom] was always much stronger in the U.S. compared to Europe in terms of the IDs at its disposal, so there wasn’t really enough we could’ve done with them,” said Billy, who is one of IPG’s clients. “And even then, it was us pushing for it, not them [IPG].”

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Despite serving as the unofficial kickoff to the advertising and media industry’s calendar, this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas doesn’t necessarily set the industry’s agenda for the year. But it does help to put it in motion.

Advertisers and agencies come to Sin City with their budgets planned out for the year, and with the annual technology showcase as the backdrop, they meet with publishers, platforms and tech vendors to map out how exactly to spend that money.

“You’ve already set the groundwork back in October [when many brands set their annual marketing budgets]. This is that ‘come to Jesus’ moment of, ‘You committed to me a million dollars. What are we doing this year?’” said Mark Wagman, managing director of data and technology at MediaLink, the UTA-owned consulting firm that will host the “Marketing Reinvented” session track during CES. “It’s a little bit of like, ‘What’s on the table and what’s coming?’”

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Both a boon of opportunity but also the bane of most media folk that have to immediately snap out of holiday mode and head to Las Vegas, CES is again upon us. With each passing year, CES becomes a more important staging area for agencies and ad-tech firms to not only learn what’s just around the corner but also to showcase what they’ve assembled. 

Tech, in its various guises, is rapidly becoming a differentiator among both holding companies and independent media agencies alike. And tech is what’s helped power French agency holding company Publicis to the forefront of its holdco brethren — at least by the gauge of financial results and stock performance. 

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In response to a copyright infringement complaint filed by a handful of music publishers in 2023, AI giant Anthropic has agreed to train its future models to avoid copying licensed music.

Top of the Ticker: Former ABC News and CNN anchor Aaron Brown passed away on Sunday, Dec. 29 at 76. Brown was best remembered for his coverage of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, which also happened to be his first day on the air. On Thursday, NewsNight anchor Abby Phillip paid tribute to Brown, whose…