Author: rssmasher

Geoff Calabrese has left Omnicom and will join Publicis Groupe as the holding company’s chief commercial officer. Calabrese, who was most recently chief executive officer of North America Investment at Omnicom Media Group, will oversee client commercial engagements across new and existing partnerships, and will be responsible for the development and delivery of commercial agreements….

The lack of cheap EVs and the reliance on combustion engines is putting Europe’s plan to ban new petrol cars by 2035 at risk.

The digital advertising industry had a lot to celebrate in 2024, as much of the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic was in the rearview mirror. Tech giants saw a spike in ad revenues: While Google’s ad revenue jumped more than 10% year over year, Meta saw a sales increase of 19% over the same…

For Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard Jared McCain, there’s more to life than basketball. 

Specifically, there’s 4.4 million followers on TikTok and 1.5 million on Instagram watching as the 20-year-old ballplayer dances, makes skits and posts sponsored content on behalf of Amazon and Yahoo.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know McCain isn’t an exception. Over the last 12 months, football players and brothers Jason and Travis Kelce inked a $100 million podcasting deal with Wondery; soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Jude Bellingham launched YouTube channels; and Angel Reese capped a breakthrough season in the WNBA by launching her own interview podcast.

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Predicting what will and won’t be popular throughout the year is a fool’s errand. Whatever you think will be the big thing may not be. Something you never could’ve predicted will probably be the biggest story of the year. And yet we do it anyway.

It’s a table setter for how we’re thinking about the year, what’s to come and what we expect to happen. When we inevitably look back on the previous year’s effort, there is often some truth and something missed that helps give us a sense of what’s changed.

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Fast food and quick service restaurant brands had a rough go over the past few years as shoppers have tried to save a few bucks amidst rising grocery prices and inflation. Seemingly, parts of the brand playbook are seeing a rewrite with things like $5 deals to make consumers feel they’re getting more bang for their buck.

It’s a tale all too familiar to Domino’s, the more than 60-year-old pizza brand that has marketed its way through brand lulls to try and win back customers who have pulled back on dining out. There were the “30 minutes or less” campaigns of the 90s, Pizza Turnaround in 2010 (when the pizza chain acknowledged the recipe needed work) Paving for Pizza in 2018, where Domino’s paved roads to ensure pizzas arrived to customers in good condition, and today’s Emergency Pizza, a pizza giveaway for so-called emergencies like burned dinner.

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One subplot worth tracking as M&A ramps up this year: brand advertising — or, more accurately, its metamorphosis into a marketing-entertainment mashup.

The days of this being mere theory are over. WPP teaming up with Universal Music Group for ad-fueled entertainment, talent agencies muscling into the ad industry, and the rise of new players like Common Interest all make one thing clear: the brand dollars are no longer waiting — they’re already there and moving fast.

“For a long while, we’ve been witnessing the death of the campaign and the birth of the cultural moment. Traditional advertising is entertainment’s understudy, while brands are learning merely to be protagonists in culture stories,” James Kirkham, co-founder of brand consultancy Iconic, explained.

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When Donald Trump becomes president later this month, some news publishers will have updated tactics and strategies in place to cover his second term, ranging from a focus on softer news stories to more social media monitoring and engagement.

One head of social at a political news publisher, who asked to speak anonymously, said they encouraged staff to use some vacation days and take time off to “mentally prepare” for a “very fast and furious 90 days” of Trump’s first few months in office.

But for some publishers, it’s still too early to make any notable changes to editorial strategy. Three editors at top news organizations — who requested anonymity for candor — told Digiday at the end of last year that they felt prepared and poised to cover Trump’s second term and didn’t think it was necessary to shift resources or coverage plans yet.

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Omnicom continued to focus on advances and changes in search during CES this week, announcing a partnership with Amazon Ads and Omnicom’s Flywheel unit that enables access to five years of search data — a move Amazon is announcing today for its Amazon Marketing Cloud clean-room solution, and an expansion from the current 13 months of data.

The deal gives Omnicom Media Group and Flywheel first-to-market access in the U.S. to the expanded data, with the goal to extend it globally. Again, much of the flow of information will also run through Omnicom’s operating platform Omni, as it did with Omnicom’s announced search deal with Google yesterday.

Via a beta test, Flywheel customers are able to access five years of search history to see how consumers’ purchase habits and conversions have evolved or changed in that time, which allows brands to adjust their strategies accordingly.

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