GroupM

People who are closest to the day-to-day nexus of data and technology are usually the first to discern meaningful turning points. For Evan Hanlon, that insight emerges as he considers years of industry talk, hopes and dreams. “I feel like we’re turning the corner beyond the sort of aspirational and the dream and all the […]

In the weeks leading up to this year’s Digital Content NewFronts, we interviewed a number of industry leaders about what matters most: They cited quality storytelling, data and insights, authentic integration, accountability and brand safety. This video is a highlight compilation our several of our conversations. The first three are a related trio of concerns. Quality […]

Even as the availability of addressable television advertising continues to grow, delivering more precise audience targeting, it will likely always be a complement to traditional mass advertising efforts. In the meantime, it’s bringing TV to brands with targets heretofore too small for spending on the medium and providing valuable targeting insights, according to Lyle Schwartz, […]

MIAMI-Even as digital-based audience targeting techniques grow in the television medium, there still needs to be a balance between one-to-one marketing and broader advertising efforts. “I think the two have to work together and you need to be careful that you don’t optimize toward specific audiences and optimize yourself out of business,” says Jason Harrison, […]

MIAMI-A group of 4A’s member agencies is banding together under the aegis of the organization’s new Advertiser Protection Bureau (APB) to collectively monitor the environments in which their clients’ advertisements appear. The APB establishes a process in which risky environments are flagged and then investigated by agency-client teams. Announced today at the 4A’s Accelerate conference, […]

Consumers may be driving the expansion of television viewing options, but publishers still face a balancing act between reducing ad loads and meeting financial goals. Ad buyers, meanwhile, are going to want to see demonstrable results for their investments in return for increased prices due to inventory reductions. “I think it’s a really complicated challenge […]

Tim Castree likes to think about audiences “as the nests that sit inside that larger purchase journey context to opportunity.” Until you can completely understand those consumers, you cannot target them to fulfill those opportunities. Wavemaker uses a two-step process that begins with identifying “the gaps, barriers, challenges, opportunities” associated with the purchase journey, the […]

Consumer purchases aren’t made in a vacuum. Which is why understanding all of the variables that precede actual purchases is the key to unlocking the consumer journey. “The idea that you go somewhere, you decide you want something, you make that purchase and then you’re done is incorrect. Inherently it just doesn’t make sense. It […]

Creativity in media is less about pushing one big message out to lots of people than it is generating conversations with consumers at every step of their purchase journey, says David Gaines, Chief Strategy Officer, Wavemaker US. “We’re moving away, I would argue, from media planning and saying ‘well, we actually need a content strategy,’” […]

Europe’s new consumer data privacy rules could make it harder for smaller ad-tech companies to operate, driving a new wave of platform consolidation. That is according to the privacy chief from the world’s largest media investment group. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came in to effect back in 2016, whilst the final deadline for […]

When you’re fashioning what’s designed to be a cutting-edge marketing agency, it’s good to know what not to do. One example is not trying to recreate what a creative agency does but being flexible when it comes to deciding who produces content for clients. “We’re set up to be super flexible,” says Noah Mallin, Head […]

How do you reboot an agency to take on more of marketers’ problems in a world where consumer change is fast and furious? In the case of GroupM’s Wavemaker, it’s thinking far beyond simply combining agencies Maxus and MEC. “It has to be more than a merger. If all we did was take two great […]

LAS VEGAS — In 2018, a lot of ad-tech firms will tell you they apply “artificial intelligence” to digital advertising trading. For Irwin Gotlieb, GroupM’s veteran – and visionary – chairman, the collection of practices that underpin AI have been around for decades. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be revolutionary, all the same. Fundamentally, […]

If the health of the advertiser business is a bellwether for the state of the economy, then listen up to the world’s largest media investment group. In this video interview with Beet.TV, GroupM chairman Irwin Gotlieb sounds a worrying call. “The troubling aspect of it is that we see more and more clients who are […]

The deployments are different in every market around the world but, slowly but surely, addressable TV – technology which helps advertisers target individual viewers – is rolling out globally. But don’t bet on this granular-targeting super-power usurping the traditional construct of TV ad-buying – wherein the goal is to reach a mass audience, measured roughly […]

MIAMI – When full-service ad agencies started unbundling their media departments in the 1990’s, the media landscape was a whole lot simpler—as in no digital. This is reflective of why when GroupM unveiled Team Arrow Partners for its client Target about 18 months ago, the announcement declared “Analytics and creativity are no longer opposing forces” […]

It is barely a year since a hard-hitting ANA report blew 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. Some agencies have sought to demonstrate they are cleaning up not only their own practices but also […]

Media companies working together on advanced television audience targeting is “a nice first step.” What needs to happen faster is measurement of content on different devices—not of the devices themselves, says Lyle Schwartz. The President of Investment for GroupM North America acknowledges that advertisers know more about TV households than ever before. “The plethora of […]

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 […]

GroupM is taking on the challenge of cross-screen audience targeting and standardized measurement by launching its own addressable TV company in the U.K. called Finecast. Following nine months of in-house testing, Finecast is up and running and spans multiple TV channels, pay-TV platforms, set-top boxes, video-on-demand services, over-the-top providers and game consoles. Jakob Nielsen, Managing […]