Author: rssmasher

H&M is kicking off 2018 with a tone-deaf product that went viral Sunday night. Twitter users noticed that the brand’s U.K. site was selling a green kids’ hoodie stamped with the phrase “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.” That could have been nothing more than a cute garment–except for the fact that the Swedish retailer used…

Intuit will kick off its first-ever corporate brand campaign with a 15-second spot in Super Bowl LII. Phenomenon, agency of record for the Intuit parent brand and Passion Animation Studios, will be tasked with creating the ad, which will “introduce two characters who are featured prominently in the company’s new brand campaign,” according to a…

Media giant Viacom is dipping its toes in the influencer marketing waters, announcing an agreement Monday to acquire Whosay. Terms of the transaction were not revealed, nor were any plans to reduce headcount at the New York-based influencer marketing shop. The two companies have a history together, as Whosay has worked with Viacom on more…

Last year’s Super Bowl saw advertisers get political, with brands tackling issues such as immigration, pay inequality and climate change. That’s one trend viewers can expect to see continue in 2018, according to video ad tech company Unruly, which measured last year’s most “effective” ads. “Last year was an interesting year, as we came out…

Ad tech company Samba TV says its Audience Platform improves the ability to granularly target TV advertising and helps marketers execute cross-screen campaigns built on a “understanding of linear TV
audiences.”

A decade after it began life as an early-stage digital start-up, MediaMath has launched a venture capital fund to back a new generation of early-stage ventures transforming advertising, marketing and
media. The fund, named MathCapital, will be overseen by its partners: MediaMath CEO and founder Joe Zawadzki; and Eric Franchi, formerly of Undertone.

The percentage of U.S. adults who “often get their news from local TV” dropped from 46% in 2016 to 37% in 2017, according to research done in August by the Pew Research Center.

RTBlog was originally conceived to discuss the passage of time, specifically how advertising, media and marketing is affected by technology, data and platforms enabling it to occur in “real-time.” So
it’s fitting coming into a new year to mark some passage of time — past, present and future. Our marketplace’s most recent past has been dominated by two players — Google and Facebook — and
according to the present outlook, they will only become even more dominant in the not-too-distant future.

TLC is evidently so pleased with its reality series “My 600-lb Life,” featuring morbidly obese people, that it will introduce a new one in the same vein on the same night this week.

L’Or?al thinks the big future of wearables is getting smaller. Specifically, wearables will be the size of one of your fingernails. Literally. Two years ago, L’Or?al launched a heart-shaped patch called My UV Patch with La Roche-Posay sunscreen that sticks to skin and uses Bluetooth technology to push data about a person’s exposure to UV…