Facebook may now be one of the biggest single spending destinations for the biggest ad agency holding group on the planet - but that doesn't mean things have always been rosy from WPP's point of view. CEO Sir Martin Sorrell has often questioned some of the social network's ad pricing mechanisms, and WPP has called for better third-party measurement of ad [...]

It is the Big Daddy of the ecommerce world and sometimes seemed to have dominated the consumer sales channel even for big brands. But Amazon is a force that can be competed against if retailers come together and get smarter with their data. That is according to one ad-tech chief hoping to leverage data scale to help replicate some of what [...]

When was the last time you enjoyed watching a 30-second TV commercial in your Facebook newsfeed? Probably never. So why do so many advertisers still jam ads built for an old medium in to the new one? That is the question Facebook and WPP's creative agencies have been working on, in a Creative Ambassadors Program geared toward educating ad-makers in what [...]

Advertisers should open their mind to the possibilities of mobile marketing that have little to do with standard ad units or the world of digital advertising as we have come to know it. That is the message to ad agencies from one woman leading creative industry engagement for Facebook's Instagram. "It's all about being agile, being very experimental, and taking risks that [...]

ORLANDO – We hear so much about the consumer journey and how brands need to follow it carefully. But what if it’s the brand’s journey that is the dominant marketing narrative? In the case of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, you take it one season at a time, be honest and transparent with fans and don’t get too far ahead [...]

ORLANDO -- Digital channels have historically been seen as the place to execute performance ad campaigns - highly targeting, highly effective and geared highly toward measuring near-term impacts like clicks or sales. Now brands are also increasingly hoping to use digital to place top-of-the-marketing-funnel awareness campaigns. Tracking the effect of such campaigns has traditionally been complex - but that doesn't mean brands [...]

ORLANDO – Marriott hotels knows a lot about what people talk about on social media and it’s become “a content machine” fueled by data and technology. “In our work for Marriott, we talk about customer centricity all the time,” says Tej Desai, Managing Partner at agency MEC. A year ago, Marriott itself comprised 19 different brands. Then came its acquisition of [...]

ORLANDO – While there’s been no shortage of issues—from transparency to artificial intelligence to brand purpose—at the Masters of Marketing gathering, there’s also a galvanizing effect. “Today I think was a renewed call to action for the community,” says Art Zambianchi, Managing Director of WPP’s MediaCom agency in Chicago. “One of the refreshing parts of the conference today is seeing the [...]

We are now two years out from when Facebook launched its Live broadcasting product. To put that in context, it took years for television advertisers to break out of simply running radio commercials, years for filmmakers to realize the medium could host more than just recorded stage plays. So, for a medium that is just two years old, what is the current [...]

ORLANDO – Not that long ago in the media business, 115 years of legacy publishing experience wasn’t an oft-cited attribute in the battle with the digital upstarts. But with trust at a premium, ensuring you can deliver it along with ad-tech capabilities and advertising guarantees gives you more than a fighting chance despite your age. Like other publishers, Meredith both partners [...]

Most histories document a 2005 start date, but, to its current CEO, 2007 was the year Criteo really got going. Eric Eichmann's milestone means the much-talked-about advertising technology company is now celebrating its tenth year. During that time, Criteo raised $250m from an IPO that valued it at $800m and courted attention for popularising the practice known as ad "retargeting". But the [...]

ORLANDO – Some customer journeys are longer than others. Consider the plight of Chicago Cubs fans who “stayed with us for 100 years without a title,” says the team’s President of Business Operations, Crane Kenney. That ended with the World Series in 2016, triggering a change in communications strategies for the venerable Midwest sports franchise. “We’re on an interesting journey with our [...]

We are in a world with more options for consuming video than ever before, from Hollywood-sized productions to shoestring YouTube uploads. But, if you are an advertiser, nothing beats the power wielded by premium video, according to one man representing the interests of big TV companies. "There are platforms and all sorts of conduits that are getting good quality video whose being [...]

It is now more than a year since the Association of National Advertisers's media transparency report helped blow the lid off practices in which US advertising agencies were accused of keeping up to 20% of clients' media budgets for themselves after engaging in "pervasive" kick-backs and rebates. That report kickstarted a cacophony of "transparency" talk, including the ANA issuing a series [...]

ORLANDO – It might be hard to believe in this Age of Amazon, but not everything can be purchased with one click. For Dell, this means using dynamic creative optimization (DCO) in different ways depending on whether it’s trying to lure consumers or businesses. “The strategy that we employ for DCO is very different on the consumer side of the business [...]

ORLANDO – When it comes to selling beer, there is no “linear funnel” as has been standard marketing textbook fare for decades. MillerCoors has a three-pronged approach to understanding to whom, where and when to distribute its messages. “I think a lot of marketers today start with a creative brief and the idea, ‘Here’s my message. Go find me places to [...]

ORLANDO – It should come as no big shock that millennials cite Facebook and Netflix as the top brands in positive word-of-mouth sentiment among their peers. That specialty size apparel retailer Lane Bryant would rank as the most improved brand in 2017 is a testament to the company’s efforts to improve the way that the world sees women, according to [...]

Long lauded as the exemplar of ad retargeting, veteran ad-tech outfit Criteo is still investing in building out its product suite farther. This time, it is focused on personalising video ads and matching ad data with brands' own customer data. Criteo already announced its Criteo Commerce Marketing Ecosystem back in the summer, a network of tens of thousands of retailers, brands and [...]

ORLANDO – To reach households with addressable ads on a one-to-one basis at scale, advertisers and agencies need to do it on a one-to-many basis. This is due to the technology and infrastructure variations between multichannel video programming distributor (MVPDs) and smart TV manufacturers. Last spring, one2one Media set out to leverage an integrated set of systems and technology to drive [...]

ORLANDO – Having handled an $8 billion advertising budget and organizational responsibility for nearly 7,000 people while at Procter & Gamble, Jim Stengel is more committed than ever to the importance of marketing. The former Global Marketing Officer is heartened to see resolution and commitment at the Masters of Marketing Conference to getting brands back to what they do well. “Make [...]