advertising

Jeremy Helfand, who rose from a position at Hulu to supervise all advertising sales across Disney’s interactive businesses will take the reins as a vice president and head of sales efforts for Amazon’s Prime Video, the executive disclosed in a post on Linkedin on Thursday.

With television making the transition from a linear medium to a digital one, GroupM has formed a group designed to give advertisers a stronger voice in how TV advertising evolves. The GroupM Ad Innovation Accelerator consists of a combination of traditional media companies, streamers and tech companies. Initial participants are BrightLine, Disney, Kerv, NBCUniversal, Roku, Telly and YouTube. Other interested parties will be able to join.

Independent credit ratings service S&P Global Ratings kicked 2024’s advertising outlook off on a stronger-than-expected note, issuing a forecast that U.S. ad spending will rise 7.6% — nearly two percentage points greater than the most recent agency holding company composite, which projects a U.S. growth rate of 5.8%. Interestingly, S&P’s outlook is even more bullish than the most optimistic holding company forecasting unit — IPG Mediabrands’ 7.2% U.S. ad-growth projection.

A new campaign from the beverage giant that starts bubbling Tuesday emphasizes its broad portfolio of drinks, not just a single product such as Fanta, Diet Coke or Dasani as has been the company’s typical marketing strategy over the years. The TV commercial, which will appear in both 30- and 90-second versions, is believed to be the first in which Coca-Cola has put a spotlight on its wider product line, rather than on a single drink.

After a difficult year for traditional advertising, top ad-tech executives see some changes coming in 2024. Growing in importance are connected TV as a channel for advertisers, the need for accountable data and a continuing shift to automation. Here are some predictions as 2024 gets underway.

The U.S. ad market expanded for the eighth consecutive month in November — albeit at mostly modest rates, according to a revised analysis of Guideline’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker. The tracker, an index of U.S. ad spending derived from actual media buys processed by 12 of the largest U.S. agencies’ — including the six major agency holding companies and major independent media services — billing systems.

Automakers spent an estimated $274.3 million on national TV spending in November, down 8.9% compared to a year ago. Year-to-date through Dec. 14, spending is down 15.8%, according to iSpot. tv. TV ad impressions were down 18.5% in November to 25.2 billion. But year-to-date impressions were up 4% to 306.6 billion.

Bite-size clips, granular targeting and simple buying afford advantages to the Alphabet-owned platform.

The good news is that following years of lagging overall U.S. ad spending growth, multicultural ad spending — ad budgets targeting Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans — will expand faster than the general marketplace next year. The bad news is most of that growth is coming from one segment — Hispanic Americans — while ad budgets aimed at Black and Asian Americans will continue to represent a minority share of multicultural ad spending.

Award shows, major sporting events and the Summer Olympics are among a rich slate of programming broadcasters can look forward to, offering a 2024 boost.

Andrea Zapata, Warner Bros. Discovery’s EVP, ad sales research, measurements and insights, will be leaving the company at year end to take a post with T-Mobile. At Warner Bros. Discovery, Zapata spearheaded the effort to use new currencies from measurement companies including VideoAmp and Comscore for advertising sales. The move follows the departure of Kelly Abcarian from NBCUniversal, where she had been EVP, measurement & impact and led the charge to improve TV measurement.

Bitcentral’s Greg Morrow: Broadcasters embracing FAST channels target the “average” viewer with advertiser at their peril, as relevancy for specific can be a game-changer for retention.

A survey from SalesFuel and BIA shows spending trends of health care marketers, finds that generative artificial intelligence services are heavily entering the marketing landscape.

Following five semi-annual revisions since it was first benchmarked in July 2021, the Big 4 agency holding company forecasting composite for worldwide ad-spending growth for this year has fallen 1.1 percentage points to 4.3%. The composite — a simple average of each holding company’s percentage growth estimate for total ad spending — also shows the consensus falling to 5.8% for worldwide growth next year, down from +7.1% when it was first benchmarked in January 2022.

Giant media buyer GroupM expects U.S. TV ad spending to fall 5.1% to $62.3 billion in 2024, excluding political ad spending, following a 5.2% decline in 2023. Traditional TV spending is seen dropping 10.7 to $45.7 billion, while spending on connected TV advertising climbs 14.8% to $16.6 billion in 2024, getting a 26.6% share of TV ad dollars.

AI is changing media sales. ChatGPT automates tasks and creates efficiencies, but OpenAI’s leadership changes show the need for a strategic approach to AI integration. ShareBuilders offers tailored AI solutions prioritizing data safety and flexibility.

Linda Rene once proved instrumental in weaving blue-chip advertisers like Anheuser-Busch and General Motors into a fledgling CBS reality competition called Survivor. Two decades later, she is planning to get off the island. Rene, an advertising-sales veteran who has worked at CBS for more than four decades, helped expand an industry practice known as product placement and was pivotal in crafting new deals that not only had advertisers providing vehicles and beverages as set dressing, but weaving their products into a show in ways that made them as prominent as some of the cast members.

Days ahead of Monday’s year-end updates from the Big 3 agency holding companies, former agency insider and renowned ad industry forecaster Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall is upgrading his own outlooks for 2023 and 2024 by nearly a percentage point each. Wieser, who in September projected U.S. ad spending would rise 5.0% and 4.3%, respectively, in 2023 and 2024, now predicts they will expand 5.9% and 5.2%, respectively.

TelevisaUnivision today appointed Steven Wolfe Pereira chief client officer of its U.S. advertising sales and marketing unit, a new position at the company. Wolfe Pereira, a veteran advertising executive, was most recently with 3Pas Studios, a multiplatform entertainment company he co-founded. In his new role, Wolfe Pereira will report to Donna Speciale, president of U.S. advertising at TelevisaUnivision.

The latest analysis of the effects of invalid traffic/IVT estimates that the problem will result in $72.37 billion in wasted ad spend in 2024 — up 33% from an estimated $54.63 billion wasted in 2022. The report, from marketing efficiency platform Lunio, was based on an analysis of 2.6 billion paid ad clicks and 104 billion impressions from more than 60,000 ad accounts across Lunio’s clients — all resulting from paid media campaigns — conducted between May 2022 and May 2023.

Innovid’s Dan Mouradian: “While conversations around attention metrics might grab your (ahem) attention, whether or not a consumer has ‘paid attention’ to your ad does not define your campaign’s effectiveness. What’s more, in an environment that has seen significant investment such metrics shouldn’t be your main focus when measuring performance in connected TV.”

The U.S. ad market expanded for its fourth consecutive month in October, rising 3.2% over October 2022, according to just-updated data from Guideline’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker. It was the biggest gain since July’s 6.2% gain, and is an indicator that the ad spending from the major agency holding companies and biggest independent media agencies has pulled out of recession — at least for now.

Internal documents show companies like Airbnb, Coca-Cola and Microsoft have halted ads, or may do so, after Elon Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Of nearly 261 companies that spent over $1 million on advertising on X/Twitter from January 2022 to October 2023, 86% of them have reduced ad spending on the platform, according to estimates from MediaRadar. Brand-safety concerns remain a major problem, according to the advertising research firm. Top 10 advertisers — including AT&T, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Capital One, Nike, and Bank of America — have reduced spending by 70% to 97%, according to the report.

A federal magistrate judge on Tuesday recommended that Meta Platforms be awarded a $36 million default judgment against four residents of Hanoi, Vietnam, who hijacked the accounts of advertising and marketing agency employees in order to perpetrate an ad fraud scheme.

Supply-side platform/SSP OpenX is eliminating all resellers and removing all non-TV content from its ad inventory. The moves are part of the launch of TV+, a solution that OpenX claims combines the most powerful aspects of linear and programmatic buying models. The overall aim is to streamline and improve transparency in CTV programmatic buying.

Madhive’s Jon Kaplan: With mass audiences more difficult to reach than ever, ad strategy should focus on targeting segments.

Amy Lehman was promoted to senior VP of ad platforms at the Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology unit. Disney also said that Ajay Arora is getting added responsibilities as SVP of commerce, growth and identity. He had been senior VP of product, commerce and experimentation.

The newest surprise at Fox’s Masked Singer isn’t tied to an appearance by a mysterious celebrity. On Wednesday night, the popular reality-competition program will bring an advertiser into its format for the first time since launching in 2019. From the opening shot to the end of the contest, Singer will use characters and other trappings from Universal’s new Trolls Band Together movie, slated to open on Friday. Singer panelist Ken Jeong will even be spotted wearing a colored wig to make himself look more like one of the creatures in the animated film.

He will be responsible for managing the advertising sales team building strategies for the site as well as overseeing the growth of the business footprint across advocacy and corporate environmental, social and governance initiatives.

Also, Karen Kovacs is upped to president of client partnerships for the advertising and partnerships division.

The Federal Trade Commission is asking a federal judge to reject efforts by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and other outside groups to weigh in on Amazon’s side in a dispute over its alleged use of “dark patterns.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau last month argued in a proposed friend-of-the-court brief that the FTC’s allegations against Amazon amounted to an attempt “to regulate and punish truthful statements made in advertising.”

The Super Bowl isn’t the only big football property that will be crammed full of advertising. Amazon’s Prime Video has sold out all the commercial inventory attached to its new “Black Friday” game, the first event the NFL has earmarked for the day after Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday-shopping season, according to Danielle Carney, head of NFL ad-sales for the company. Amazon has also sold out of ad inventory in the Thursday Night Football games slated for Nov. 16 and 30, she says, in part because the company has tried to sell broader ad packages that connect an ad message across a broader swath of content.