Advertising Perspectives

Even the biggest and most lauded advertisers struggle with moving more marketing in-house. Coca-Cola is a case in point: two years into its own in-house plan, and it’s still very much a work in progress.  ... read more

Targeted advertising may be the dominant digital approach, but it’s still a burgeoning aspect of the broadening TV ad market. But that’s changing, albeit slowly though not as slowly anymore. Case in point: The Walt ... read more

Bloomberg Media and iHeartMedia are releasing five podcast shows this year, part of a co-production and distribution podcast deal between the business publisher and audio giant to create over a dozen new original shows in ... read more

In this week’s Media Briefing, media editor Kayleigh Barber analyzes the latest quarterly earnings reports from BuzzFeed, IAC’s Dotdash Meredith, News Corp’s Dow Jones, Future plc, Gannett and The New York Times. The state of ... read more

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to companies’ returns to the office — even across departments at a given company. Some publishers are adopting team-specific policies, and while they are designed to make the return to in-person work ... read more

Zenash “Zeny” Shifferaw didn’t grow up playing with Barbie dolls. The 35-year-old California native was the child of Ethiopian immigrant parents who encouraged Shifferaw and her two siblings to instead build their own worlds, characters ... read more

Add Ebiquity to the growing list of companies looking to exploit the fact that TV measurement in the U.S. is no longer dominated by one company. The media management firm sees TV measurement (or the ... read more

The global Covid-19 pandemic is not yet officially over but after an approximately two-year hiatus, in-person events are definitely making their way back, and the marketing industry is no outlier in that regard. Many are ... read more

Matt Bartels, principal and media practice lead, Alexander Group The pandemic left an indelible mark on businesses around the world. This abrupt market force challenged leaders to reevaluate their business model, think creatively, work collaboratively ... read more

Sponsored by Stirista The advertising industry’s shift toward a privacy-first ecosystem has pushed marketing teams into a state of testing and experimentation. Amid the deprecation of standard identifiers such as third-party cookies and mobile IDs, ... read more

Sponsored by Amazon Ads Brands are always looking for their next big creative idea, the creative that will inspire customers, and potential ones, to choose their brand.  Often brand leaders rely on insight from ... read more

CTV is now a go-to marketing channel driving conversions and awareness for brands of all kinds. But with increasing privacy regulations, marketers face challenges in approaching the channel — now and in the future.  While ... read more

Ashlea Cartee, product marketing manager, OneTrust In the age of privacy and increased consumer awareness, brands must protect marketing databases and restrict external access to customer data. Adhering to regulations and frameworks and proactively honoring ... read more

Ashlea Cartee, product marketing manager, OneTrust In the age of privacy and increased consumer awareness, brands must protect marketing databases and restrict external access to customer data. Adhering to regulations and frameworks and proactively honoring ... read more

Does the red-hot world of e-commerce — estimated to be in the neighborhood of $100 billion according to Boston Consulting Group — even need its own “upfront”? Horizon Media’s topical Night Market unit certainly thinks ... read more

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how Amazon, Roku and YouTube stand to play a bigger role in this year’s upfront market after leveling up in the last couple years. Upstream TVStreaming viewership ... read more

Three months after Vox Media and Group Nine’s branded content studios merged, the newly combined Vox Creative is using its different podcast ad formats to integrate audio advertising into advertisers’ campaigns or to upsell advertisers ... read more

Marketers may be aware of the looming demise of third-party cookies, but they generally still seem stuck in second gear when it comes to finding new alternative solutions. That’s what a recent report from marketing ... read more

The flagship Google Marketing Live conference is underway this week in which the ad industry’s largest name typically showcases its wares. This year’s installment is taking place as lawmakers and potential interlopers dial up the ... read more

Almost every downturn presents an opportunity to take advantage of change and win — even for publishers. For Bloomberg Media, that opportunity is to become a bit more mainstream.  No, it’s not a new goal. ... read more

Brands are increasingly spending their gaming marketing budgets to build immersive activations inside metaverse platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite. But although these platforms can deliver tremendous traffic and engagement, actually getting those users ... read more

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify In the roughly two years since Jason Webby joined Future plc as chief revenue officer for North America, the U.K. publisher has acquired eight companies — including ... read more

If you start an agency in ninth grade with your buddy, and it’s still going strong decades later, you might be onto something. So it was with MichaelAaron Flicker and his agency XenoPsi, although his ... read more

Brands pushing the envelope on social media isn’t a new concept. But as the social landscape has become more crowded and advertisers look for ways to stand out, it’s a marketing strategy that’s become even ... read more

With Disney+, Disney is looking to set a new high-water mark for ad prices among the major ad-supported streamers. The pricey pitch is representative of a broader rising tide in streaming ad pricing in this ... read more

Thanks to Paramount Advertising for sponsoring Digiday’s upfront week coverage and presenting this edition of the Digiday+ Media Buying Briefing, normally available exclusively to paying subscribers. The annual cavalcade of upfront presentations by the dwindling ... read more

Smaller podcast production companies and creative studios are touting the benefits of custom, longer-form podcast ad formats — understandably so, given that they can charge more for them compared to shorter ad reads. But ad ... read more

With more people venturing back outside after Covid-19 lockdown, Sunday Scaries is rolling out its first out-of-home campaign in hopes to capture their attention. The California-based CBD brand is one of many spending more ad ... read more

For as quickly as Nielsen’s grip on the TV measurement market appears to have loosened in the last year, the measurement provider will likely retain its hold on this year’s upfront. That conclusion has become ... read more

Earnings season for Big Media just ended and the takeaway is that things are going to get worse before they get better. Marketers are jittery about advertising. Media owners wonder whether the future of ... read more

Amid Digiday Media’s first Commerce Week, publishers gathered virtually on Thursday to hear from one another on their commerce strategies. Execs from Vice, Vox Media, Leaf Group and BuzzFeed joined panel discussions to chat about ... read more

Yesterday, Quontic Bank opened its first presence inside Decentraland, with plans to expand the virtual outpost into a bona fide virtual bank, replete with all of the financial services offered in Quontic’s physical locations. The ... read more

This story was first reported on, and published by, Digiday sibling WorkLife. Remote working has enabled employers to hire people not only who live anywhere but who come from a wealth of diverse backgrounds, bringing ... read more

To say the U.S. is awash with contentious social issues is an exercise in understatement, and in recent years it has intensified. In the era of the Trump administration, the volume was dialed up ... read more

As TV ad buyers and sellers return to the upfront negotiating table with economic uncertainty looming overhead, flexibility will be a big bargaining chip that both sides expect to haggle over. “There’s no question that ... read more

In this week’s Media Briefing, senior media reporter Sara Guaglione reports on how unions at some major media companies are pushing back against publishers’ return to office mandates, with The New York Times Guild seemingly ... read more

The networks sure picked a terrible week to pitch billions of dollars of ad time to media buyers.  The stock market tumbled severely yesterday just as most of the TV media companies wrapped their presentations ... read more

Thanks to Paramount Advertising for sponsoring Digiday’s upfront week coverage and presenting this edition of the Digiday+ Future of TV Briefing, normally available exclusively to paying subscribers. This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at ... read more

In today’s digital world, where things happen instantaneously, public relations agencies are struggling to sell clients on the value of a slow brand build. The digital boom of 2020, and the pandemic lockdown that pushed ... read more

Following a brace of acquisition deals where it announced its intention to spend up to an (estimated) $70 billion on Activision Blizzard and Xandr, Microsoft’s advertising ambitions are starting to become a bit more clear. ... read more

Microsoft and Sony are both on the verge of starting their own in-game advertising businesses, but their work is cut out for them. Both tech giants boast massive player bases and potential inventory, yet their ... read more

Innovation, audience insights, growth and community emerged as a few of the themes among this year’s Digiday Media Awards shortlist. The submissions made it clear that branded content continues to be relevant and, as a ... read more

Last week, Airbnb unveiled “probably the largest change we’ve made,” per Airbnb’s global head of marketing Hiroki Asai, with a redesign that allows people to search for categories (i.e. surfing or design, etc.) as well ... read more

Despite significant declines in BuzzFeed Inc.’s commerce business, overall revenue was up 26% year over year in the first quarter of 2022 — its first quarter as a fully combined company, which includes BuzzFeed, HuffPost ... read more

Just as the TV upfront week kicks off, the out-of-home media’s trade association is out to remind media buyers and marketers of the efficiency and effectiveness of its constituents’ boards and screens on consumers. Whether ... read more

YouTube has been encroaching on the traditional TV ad upfront market for years. This year the Google-owned digital video platform is making its most direct attempt to crash the TV upfront by scheduling its Brandcast ... read more

As the third-party cookie apocalypse approaches, it’s looking increasingly likely that there will not be one sole replacement that will satisfy publishers’ and advertisers’ needs. That’s never more evident than when you ... read more

Only 10% of marketers to have bought into the first-generation of customer data platforms believe their purchases are fit for purpose with even less (1%) certain such technology will stand up to the requirements of ... read more

As the supply chain crisis continues to wreak havoc on industries that use marketing to sell their goods, Omnicom Media Group, Digiday has learned, has created a tool designed to help brands calculate where and ... read more

Not content with competing for major honors in the world of football, English juggernaut club Manchester City wants to do the same in esports.  The club signed its second Fortnite player Konrad Skram last month ... read more

For as instrumental as the upfront is to the TV advertising marketplace, it can be somewhat enigmatic. So the upfront refers to the cycle each year when TV networks present their upcoming lineups of shows ... read more

In 2021, gaming and esports company Enthusiast Gaming acquired the dormant esports media brand Upcomer, with plans to turn it into a leading esports news publication. But in March 2022, as Upcomer’s readership continued to ... read more

To promote the release of its film-inspired title, Evil Dead: The Game, game developer Saber Interactive partnered with Snap and Game Informer to create a grisly augmented-reality magazine cover featuring audio and video assets pulled ... read more

Improvements in podcast ad technology, as well as the diverse audiences and creators in the audio space, were the focuses of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s three-day Podcast Upfront this week, which wrapped on May 12. ... read more

Blue Apron is making a marketing comeback. For the first time since 2018, the direct-to-consumer meal kit company is making a serious investment in marketing again, rebounding after falling sales and stalled subscriptions in 2019. ... read more

Marketers at the Walgreens-owned retail pharmacy chain Boots are settling down for a long, hard test to get the most from a data clean room strategy — but to do so, they first had to ... read more

In this week’s Media Briefing, media editor Kayleigh Barber checks in on how publishers’ attempts to win over advertisers with their shoppable video and livestream shopping programs are going. Market check: shoppable videoGoodbye to embedded ... read more

After Disney saw streaming subscriber growth accelerate in the final three months of 2021, that growth slowed yet again in the first three months of 2022. The ebbing applied across Disney’s streaming portfolio, including Disney+. ... read more

Over the last year, Colgate-Palmolive built out an in-house media team as part of its plan to modernize the company’s capabilities and take a hybrid approach to media buying and planning. While WPP and Wavemaker ... read more

Fortnite Creative is becoming a hub for metaversal brand activations, and the demand has pushed companies to look beyond Epic Games, the developer of the title, to reach audiences. From that interest, a cottage industry ... read more

Google is set to launch a new tool to help users better manage the types of ads they see and precisely who’s behind them, in a move it hopes will placate the privacy and transparency ... read more

This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here. “Intellectual property” is a term often reserved for the Disneys ... read more

Here’s the latest sign that the gaming market is going through unprecedented change: games publishers are developing their own advertising businesses. In fact, it won’t be long before Upfront-style events fronted by those businesses are ... read more

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at Samsung’s pitch for advertisers to run their upfront deals through its demand-side platform and the potential for other streaming ad sellers to follow suit. Demand on the ... read more

While most brands have ramped up their social media ad spend, food and spice brand Zatarain’s remains bullish on leveraging an organic strategy.  Instead of spending big to acquire customers and boost brand awareness on ... read more

This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here. Online shopping was exacerbated by the pandemic, which closed in-person ... read more

Publicly traded companies have been disclosing their financial performance for the opening quarter of the calendar year in recent weeks with investors anxious given the delicate global economic climate. Even Google-parent Alphabet fell short of ... read more

It’s not often an agency will base an opening conversation with a potential client around failure — but that’s exactly the tactic full-service agency Butchershop employs, rallying around the declarative mantra, “Beat Failure.”  The independent ... read more

Ben Kneen, senior director of product management, Xandr It’s a challenging time for retailers in the advertising industry. As they cope with supply chain woes and inflation-related pressures, they seek high-margin revenue streams amid evolving ... read more

In a subscription business, recurring monthly or annual payments are key to maintaining — and growing — revenue. Therefore reducing the churn of paying readers canceling their subscriptions is the name of the game. Publishers ... read more

As consumer viewing habits are increasingly focused on creators, the revenue plays associated with the trend have taken on considerably more urgency, sophistication and scale. With TikTok’s announcement last week of its new ad product, ... read more

Screenvision can count its lucky stars that the latest entrant in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — scored $185 million over the weekend in North American box office ... read more

With seemingly strange things happening in media from streaming struggles to advertising amid rampant inflation, marketers say there are no simple answers. Here are the key points: A recession in the near term is ... read more

The third-party cookie is in the autumn of its years, a tumultuous development in the marketing industry that has used the software as a bedrock of its user targeting and tracking efforts since the inception ... read more

The return to travel has come back in nearly full force and for a media brand like Condé Nast Traveler, that’s music to its editors’ ears. Like any travel publication in March ... read more

Sponsored by KERV Video is an effective way to engage with consumers that brands of all kinds are increasingly adopting. However, not all video ad formats serve the same purpose when it comes to advertising.  ... read more

The Association of National Advertisers is nearly a year into its three-year effort to guide marketers, researchers, platforms, media companies and agencies to create a cohesive blueprint on cross-media measurement. But it’s not all rosy. ... read more

This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here. If you build it, they will come. ... read more

The programmatic advertising industry is transitioning from a cookie-based era to what could become the age of the clean room. Managing that transition isn’t so easy, though. Publishers are already feeling a little overwhelmed, and ... read more

This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here. Most major brands are working with creators in some ... read more

Asaf Shamly, CEO and co-founder, Browsi User experience and advertising have been in a complicated relationship since the dawn of internet advertising. Stuffing a website with too many ads can cause publishers to lose their ... read more

On the eve of the $20-plus billion upfront marketplace, linear TV is girding to grapple for all the value it can secure in the face of growing competition for eyeballs and advertisers from connected TV ... read more

WPP and Epic Games yesterday announced a new partnership intended to help educate WPP agencies and their clients about the potential opportunities awaiting brands in the metaverse.  The partnership includes a training program designed to ... read more

As employers continue to beckon staff back to in-person work, many are reconsidering the role office space plays in workflow and company culture.  Covid-19 challenged the traditional, in-person 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work model ... read more

Digiday’s NewFronts coverage is presented by Amazon. On the final day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s four-day NewFronts, TV networks, streaming services and digital video publishers pitched new ad-supported programming and streaming properties. A pair ... read more

Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch League is borrowing a play from the NCAA. To generate interest and engagement in the OWL’s regular season, which kicked off on Thursday, the company has introduced an updated “Pick’em” feature — a ... read more

Programmatic marketers are contending with plenty of challenges, and they gathered in Palm Springs, Calif, to discuss them at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, which kicked off on May 4.  During a pair of closed-door ... read more

This story was originally published on our sister site, WorkLife. The latest benefit in the war to attract and retain talent: Reimbursing expenses for employees who travel out of state to get an abortion. ... read more

This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here. TikTok can be a scary place for publishers. ... read more

In June, virtual platform The Sandbox will be the location of the first metaverse-native LGBTQ pride parade. The event is the brainchild of People of Crypto (POC) Lab, a new agency and innovation hub focused ... read more

Social media platforms and Black-owned publishers can help marketers reach a wide range of communities. That was the message from the panels and presentations by media companies and social platforms aimed at urging media buyers ... read more

Over the last three-and-a-half years, Skullcandy has gone from having a couple of production designers in-house to building out its own internal creative agency. The roughly 20-person in-house team is responsible for the content creation ... read more

In this week’s Media Briefing, media editor Kayleigh Barber looks at a growing frustration among publishers’ ad sales teams that they are losing clients to their commerce counterparts. Commerce vs. advertisingThe New York Times’ Q1 ... read more

Digiday’s NewFronts coverage is presented by Amazon. During Amazon’s IAB NewFronts presentation on Monday, Twitch representative Sarah Iooss spent most of her allotted time reaffirming her company’s commitment to creators. As competition mounts between livestreaming ... read more

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how Netflix’s and Disney+’s plans to add ad-supported tiers are ushering in the broadcast era of streaming. The new broadcastersParamount’s Q1 2022 earnings reportCTV’s “other” rival for ... read more

Sustainability is one of the hot-button issues in the 21st century and one that’s increasingly generating discussion at the highest echelons of the advertising industry.  True, the cause is noble, but now ad execs are ... read more

Digiday’s NewFronts coverage is presented by Amazon. Day two of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s four-day NewFronts digital video advertising presentations featured platforms, streamers and publishers pitching celebrity —and creator —driven content. Samsung’s advertising division highlighted ... read more

This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here. BuzzFeed has invested in a program for creators for ... read more

After going viral with a “Hot Girls Have IBS” billboard campaign earlier this year, snack and wellness brand BelliWelli is taking a bigger swing in the out-of-home advertising space to boost brand awareness. Over the ... read more

In recent months, marketers have seemed to be more and more bullish on the metaverse. Pitches for various metaverse activations — some with in-person extensions — have been consistent as marketers seem to be hoping ... read more