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☆ Apple is looking for a top sales executive to spearhead a giant advertising push in sports and streaming. Here are 16 execs who could score the job.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Claire Atkinson | Lucia Moses | Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Netflix also conducted a search before hiring two Snap executives, Jeremi Gorman and Peter Naylor, to lead its new ads business. XandrLesser, a longtime digital ad executive, has extensive experience working on issues around the future of digital marketing. McDonald has a ton of other digital ad sales and publishing experience. She helped launch Modi Media, ad buying giant GroupM's addressable TV business, before joining TV adtech startup Cadent. UnivisionValentino runs Disney's digital ad business as EVP, client and brand solutions.

☆ My company made $1 million in its first year during the 2008 financial crisis. My advice for entrepreneurs is to start now — here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( Emma Magnus | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

He saw the 2008 financial crisis as a chance to recruit talent and clients looking to make a change. Allen started his company in 2008 and turned over $1 million in the first year of operation. When I saw the financial crisis starting to develop back in 2008, it felt like the right moment to start my own brand-consultancy business. In January 2008, I bit the bullet and gave up a comfortable WPP package to start my own consultancy business, Brandpie. We ended up making about £1.1 million, over $1 million, in revenue in our first year.

☆ Per Pedersen Aimed to Change the Face of Advertising
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( James R. Hagerty | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Per Pedersen spent most of his career at Grey, an advertising unit of WPP, before launching his by The Network ad cooperative. Per Pedersen ‘s death on Jan. 4, of cancer at age 58, cut short his leadership of an experiment aimed at changing the face of advertising. Mr. Pedersen, a Dane who spent most of his career at Grey, an advertising unit of the global WPP PLC, believed that giant companies were stifling creativity and failing to attract or retain free spirits with fresh ideas. In 2020, he founded a cooperative—known as by The Network—to help small independently owned agencies around the world collaborate. It serves 34 agencies, employing a total of about 750 people, in more than 30 countries.

☆ Creator economy experts say 2023 will be a buyer's market for M&A. Here are 5 themes to watch, from tech buyers like Shopify to startup consolidation
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Marta Biino | Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

"As a result, institutional acquirers, like PE firms who still have dry powder to spend, will start snatching up mid-to-large sized creator startups at much more advantageous prices." Insider spoke with creator-economy and market experts about what deals and the broader M&A landscape in 2023 may look like. "They're going to see that the creator economy exists as a direct failure of them to support creators," Gestetner said. "But if an opportunity arises for us to significantly enhance our capabilities to make us a better business powering the creator economy, we'll consider it." Startups can expect consolidation in saturated marketsThe crowded niches within the creator economy startup sphere could also face a wave of consolidation.

☆ From Amazon to The Trade Desk, experts predict these companies will be the most active acquirers of advertising businesses next year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

There's a strong interest from acquirers in hot trends like commerce media and data consultancy. Experts predicted the companies most likely to be acquirers of advertising businesses in 2023. Many industry observers expect advertising industry M&A deal volume and value to be down next year due to volatile macroeconomic conditions. Experts across the advertising industry — from consultants, to agency executives, analysts, investors, and adtech leaders — named the companies likely to be active in the advertising M&A market in 2023 and why. Apple could make an under-the-radar adtech acquisition for its sleeping giant advertising businessIndustry insiders predict Apple has big plans for its $5 billion-and-growing advertising business next year.

☆ It's just the beginning of M&A in the creator economy. Industry experts predict 2023's top trends, and the buyers and sellers to watch.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Marta Biino | Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

"As a result, institutional acquirers, like PE firms who still have dry powder to spend, will start snatching up mid-to-large sized creator startups at much more advantageous prices." "They're going to see that the creator economy exists as a direct failure of them to support creators," Gestetner said. "But if an opportunity arises for us to significantly enhance our capabilities to make us a better business powering the creator economy, we'll consider it." Startups can expect consolidation in saturated marketsThe crowded niches within the creator economy startup sphere could also face a wave of consolidation. In the creator economy, companies bet on the fact that YouTube advertising revenue on the videos will increase as the audiences of creators grow and they gain more views.

☆ Retail advertising surged in 2022 — but in 2023, these new ad businesses will need to steal TV ad budget to survive
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Retailers will face more competition for ad dollars with smaller ad budgets from marketers in 2023. WPP's media buying unit GroupM said that retail media brought in $110 billion this year and is on track to generate $160 billion by 2027. But 2023 will be the year that determines which retail ad businesses will win and which will lose. But some retailers are trying to grow their retail media businesses by separating those two, so retail ads are no longer part of the distribution deal. Retailers are coming for TV budgetsIf retail media budgets increase, other types of ad budgets must get cut.

☆ Ad Firms Predict Slower Advertising Growth for 2023
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Megan Graham | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

Major advertising forecasting firms say global advertising growth in 2023 will be slower than previously predicted. Automotive advertising could grow again after a period of moderate decline as the industry gradually emerges from the supply-chain crisis, the firm added. A separate forecast from media and data giant GroupM, part of WPP PLC, predicted that global advertising revenue will grow 5.9% next year, a downgrade from its 6.4% estimate in June. GroupM said global advertising revenue this year will grow 6.5%, excluding political advertising, down from its June forecast of 8.4%. Growth in China will be less than expected because of that country’s pandemic-related lockdowns, the firm said.

“There’s no such thing as a set forecast right now,” said Sophie Kelly, senior vice president of whiskies at Diageo North America, speaking at the same event. The firm, a unit of Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Mediabrands, cut its growth forecast for next year to 4.8% from an earlier prediction of 5.8% in June. Organic revenue growth is a metric that removes the effects of currency fluctuations, acquisitions and disposals. Airbnb Inc. slashed its advertising spending and invested in brand marketing, lessening its reliance on search-engine marketing. “We knew that people are changing their behavior,” said William White, Walmart’s chief marketing officer.

☆ Check out the pitch deck privacy compliance platform SafeGuard Privacy used to raise $7 million in funding
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Privacy-compliance platform SafeGuard Privacy has raised $7 million in a "late-stage seed" round. Check out key slides from the pitch deck that helped SafeGuard Privacy secure the investment. Founded in 2019 by advertising industry veteran Richy Glassberg and longtime attorney Wayne Matus, SafeGuard Privacy describes itself as the "TurboTax of privacy compliance." Glassberg said SafeGuard Privacy helps companies mitigate risk and save money on hourly lawyer fees as a patchwork of different privacy laws roll out across US states and globally. Check out the key slides from the pitch deck that helped SafeGuard Privacy raise its $7 million late-stage seed round below.

☆ 'Profoundly disturbing': The PR firm for the COP27 climate summit has a long history with Big Oil
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Sam Meredith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

"Hill and Knowlton is the main lobbying communications firm for the oil industry," said Duncan Meisel, campaign director at Clean Creatives, a U.S.-based group working to disentangle the PR industry from the fossil fuel sector. "Any PR firm that is actively supporting to promote [a] narrative of continued fossil fuel expansion under any circumstances is a problem," Muffett told CNBC via telephone. watch nowIt comes at a time of growing momentum for calls to end fossil fuel production worldwide. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently called out what he described as the "massive public relations machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny." "Fossil fuel interests need to spend less time averting a PR disaster — and more time averting a planetary one."

☆ Complexity for Marketers Has Meant Opportunity for Ad Agencies
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Megan Graham | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Their performance is striking compared with ad agencies’ plight five years ago: Facebook and Google had established direct relationships with marketers and were winning growing portions of their ad budgets before agencies could even offer their services. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CMO Today CMO Today delivers the most important news of the day for media and marketing professionals. PREVIEWSome major owners of ad agencies watched their growth slow or flatten in 2017 and 2018. Agency companies have responded by building practices to help marketers on platforms like TikTok and Amazon. Marketers navigate outside partnersSome major marketers still want to keep a close handle on some of their data efforts.

☆ Sorrell's S4 Capital defies tech turmoil to maintain momentum
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Paul Sandle | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SummarySummary Companies Digital ad group says it maintained momentum in Q3Reiterates full-year earnings forecastShares rise as much as 9%LONDON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Martin Sorrell said his digital ad group S4 Capital (SFOR.L) had maintained momentum in a third quarter marked by disappointing results from major platforms including Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook's Meta (META.O). Shares in S4 rose 9% to 229 pence in early deals, the highest level since the downgrade in the summer. Sorrell said Twitter and Snap, which each account for around 1% of the digital ad market, were not a good indicator for the sector. He said advertisers were pausing spending on Twitter pending clarity on how new owner Elon Musk would moderate content. "At the moment most clients are suspending their activities because they're worried about extreme content and content moderation on the site."

In the three years to the end of 2021, Alphabet, Meta and Snap (SNAP.N) hared ahead. The upshot was the Big Tech groups boasted 2021 revenue of $380 billion, most of which was digital advertising. Alphabet, Meta and Snap saw revenue up a miserly 2.4%, on average. For one thing, digital ad giants’ stellar 2021 made maintaining the pace trickier. Meta and Alphabet will still see some of this cash given traditional ad players will use platforms like Google for these big clients’ digital advertising.

☆ NBA Hires CMO From Paramount as It Pushes Digital Products
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Katie Deighton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

The National Basketball Association named media executive Tammy Henault to be its chief marketing officer as it sharpens its focus on its direct-to-consumer platforms. Ms. Henault joins the NBA after eight years at Paramount Global, where most recently she was senior vice president overseeing consumer marketing for the media company’s streaming platform, Paramount+, and led marketing strategy for its launch. She previously held marketing posts overseeing digital products at New York Times Co. and Time Inc. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CMO Today CMO Today delivers the most important news of the day for media and marketing professionals. It also added NBA ID, a free membership program, to its roster of direct-to-consumer subscriptions products.

☆ Ad group WPP wrestles with wage pressure in resilient quarter
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Paul Sandle | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Shares in WPP, which have fallen 20% in the last 12 months, were down 3.8% early on Wednesday. Analysts at Citi said they reduced their earnings per share forecast by around 5% following the margin guidance change. Read said Brazil and India were stand-outs in the quarter, although COVID-19 lockdowns weighed on China, which was down 9%. Western Europe was "softer", he said, with adjusted like-for-like revenue down 2.1%, dragged lower by a COVID-19 contract in Germany in the prior year. ($1 = 0.8651 pounds)Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar and Jan HarveyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Marketers’ Continued Spending Makes WPP Latest Ad Giant to Boost Guidance
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Megan Graham | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

PREVIEWLike-for-like revenue less pass-through costs compares net sales at constant currencies and excludes acquisitions, disposals and costs such as expenses billed to clients. The company saw like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs increase 3.8% in the third quarter, compared with the period a year earlier. WPP Chief Executive Mark Read said the company’s clients’ appear to be continuing their spending in the fourth quarter. “We’re not expecting a slowdown in the fourth quarter,” Mr. Read said. In September, Interpublic Group of Cos.’s Magna unit clipped its U.S. advertising growth forecast for 2023, saying a weaker economic environment is likely to cut into spending.

☆ FTSE 100 dips as mixed earnings offset Sunak-driven optimism
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The FTSE 100 index (.FTSE) was down 0.1% by 0747 GMT, while the midcap FTSE 250 (.FTMC) rose 0.2%. Shares of WPP (WPP.L) dropped 3.6% to the bottom of FTSE 100 after the group tempered its expectations for operating margin growth, and Reckitt Benckiser (RKT.L) slumped 3.2% despite providing a positive sales outlook. read moreSunak said he would try to fix the mess left by his predecessor, restore trust in British politics and tackle a "profound economic crisis". Shares of Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and Barclays (BARC.L) slipped even as both the lenders reported higher quarterly profit. read moreReporting by Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-PhillipsOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Data-management company InfoSum has laid off staff as its tech struggles to gain traction in the US, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Lara O'Reilly | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sources said the company had struggled to gain traction in the US and missed revenue targets. Data-management company InfoSum had a recent round of layoffs, the company confirmed. Founded in the UK in 2016, InfoSum is a software-as-a-service platform that offers companies tools to store and manage their data. Another person familiar with the matter estimated the layoffs hit 12% of Infosum's staff, or about 20 employees. The company didn't hit its revenue goal last year and these people said it was unlikely it'd hit its 2022 target either.

With Jeremy Hunt taking up the role on Friday, Britain has had four finance ministers in just four months. Prior to the 2016 Brexit vote, Britain had four finance ministers in 23 years, underlining a sense of stability that is now gone. The response was brutal: the pound slumped, government borrowing costs surged, lenders pulled mortgage deals and the Bank of England had to intervene to stop some pension funds from going under. While Truss had touted low corporation tax as a way to attract business investment, the executives said they wanted stability. British business investment, which flatlined after the 2016 Brexit vote and then fell sharply during the pandemic, was 6% lower in the second quarter of this year than its level of six years ago, in stark contrast to international peers.

☆ These 12 behind-the-scenes execs are innovating TikTok's surging ad business, which will soon be worth more than Snap's and Twitter's combined
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Lindsay Rittenhouse | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

TikTok's ad revenue is expected to triple to $11.64 billion this year, and it's building out products aggressively to hit its goal. In fact, if TikTok's ad revenues triple to $11.64 billion this year from 2021, as Insider Intelligence predicts, it will surpass the combined ad revenues of Twitter and Snapchat combined. Gabriela Comazzetto, head of LATAM global business solutionsComazzetto, another Facebook poach, has been overseeing TikTok's ad business in one of its fastest growing regions for just over a year. Shant Oknayan, general manager of METAP global business solutionsOknayan manages the TikTok for Business platform for the METAP region. Sameer Singh, general manager of APAC global business solutionsSingh oversees the TikTok for Business platform across APAC.

☆ Unilever Goes Back to the Drawing Board With Accessible Deodorant Design
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Katie Deighton | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

It has been more than 17 months since Unilever PLC-owned deodorant brand Degree said it had created a concept for what it called the “world’s first inclusive” deodorant for people with disabilities. The original design for Degree Inclusive featured a hook for hanging and magnetic closures. An ad for Unilever’s Degree Inclusive deodorant. Unilever introduced Degree Inclusive in April 2021 as a “concept deodorant” designed to make application easier for people with limited mobility. “Inclusive design and industrial design are both quite complex in and of themselves, and when you weave those together…it’s something that doesn’t happen at the snap of the finger,” he said.

☆ M&A in the ad industry surged in the first half of 2022, despite economic uncertainty. These 11 behind-the-scenes players from companies like Deloitte and Havas are driving the spree
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Lindsay Rittenhouse | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Advertising and media M&A increased 21% year-over-year in the first half of 2022 despite economic uncertainty. Ad agencies like Havas and consultancies like Deloitte ramped up deals as they look to bolster tech capabilities. Insider identified 11 execs leading M&A at the top ad companies. While private equity companies are driving much of this activity, agencies and consulting firms are also snapping up firms to strengthen their digital capabilities, Ciesco reported. Insider identified 11 executives overseeing ad industry M&A activity for these agencies.

, said in a statement that Drizly is one of the few places where her company can run multimedia ad campaigns. The database allows the company to charge above-market rates for ad placements, according to Mr. Patel. The company also hired Gina Hardy as its first chief customer officer to oversee all marketing operations. Mr. Patel declined to comment on specific growth goals for Drizly, but said the company sees significant potential in its advertising platform, which is independent of its parent company’s Uber Eats ad business. Drizly sales grew 517% from September 2019 to September 2021, according to market-research firm Bloomberg Second Measure.

☆ The biggest ad buying agency predicts e-commerce advertising will be a $100 billion industry this year. Here are 3 problems retailers need to fix for that to come true.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A new report from ad network GroupM says retail media will be worth $100 billion by the end of 2022. But retailers need to entice ad dollars from brands that don't sell e-commerce products. Retailers also need to make sure people keep buying online, despite an e-commerce slowdown. An automaker, for example, could use a retailer's data to target ads for people who recently bought ice scrapers. E-commerce activity is slowing down, and retailers need to make sure consumers keep buying onlineRetailers will need to keep customers shopping online to grab ad budgets.

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