kirk mcdonald

In the fast-changing world of communications, media agencies routinely have to reconfigure themselves for new demands and to re-settle their earlier growth initiatives. In its latest such exercise, WPP’s GroupM has just undergone a multi-layered reorganization. In this video interview with Beet.TV, Kirk McDonald, CEO, GroupM, NA, outlines how the group is changing, and how […]

What happens when consumers, regulators and service providers rip up the fabric of ad targeting practices that have prevailed for the last two decades? “Profound change,” according to GroupM North America CEO Kirk McDonald. In this video interview with Beet.TV, McDonald interviews MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki on how the entire advertising industry can reboot itself […]

These days, just acting in your own interests isn’t enough. Companies are compelled to take a positive stance on a range of outward issues – but often find that benefits nevertheless flow back in. As part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, advertising agency executives discussed what they are doing on […]

GroupM has taken a stand on what it calls media responsibility, outlining a framework of five key pillars.  This initiative is the basis of a half-day Global Forum on June 23, produced by Beet.TV in collaboration with GroupM and the 4A’s. We spoke with Kirk McDonald, CEO of GroupM NA about the event and his […]

It may already have one of the largest list of divisions in the industry, but ad agency holding group WPP has just launched another new agency. But Choreograph is a little different. Launched at a time when brands around the world are trying to activate their own first-party data as a response to challenges facing […]

It’s been nearly 2 years since many of us gathered in Cannes.  I wish we were going back next month, sadly  we’re not.   We’ll be there next year. But the conversation around the pace of creativity and innovation and change remains constant, if not accelerated. Marking the two years since Cannes, we are doing a […]

From his early days at Conde Nast, to the adtech world of PubMatic, to his present senior post at AT&T, he’s “always been alone.”  The feeling has been most acute at industry events, which somehow appear “unfamiliar,”explains Kirk McDonald, Chief Business Officer of AT&T’s Xandr unit.* Fully qualified, he often saw himself as an “imposter” […]

Of all the work we’ve done over the past 14, years, the nearly 8,000 videos we’ve produced, nothing has been as consequential as our Black Lives Matter series, titled Our Voices Our Hopes.. I am grateful to Kirk McDonald and my other dear friends, along with so many new acquaintances, for having spoken so candidly […]

Is “relevance” still… relevant? Over the last few years, advertising “relevance” has, for many ad-tech execs become the holy grail of advertising effectiveness. For AT&T’s Xandr, however, it is more than that. This September 16 to 18 in Santa Barbara, the company hosts its second Relevance Conference. In its first year, 2018, the conference effectively […]

CANNES—A year ago at the Cannes Lions, AT&T provided a sneak peak of its future with a tease banner outside the Carlton Hotel that would presage the launch of Xandr, formerly AT&T Advertising & Analytics. “It’s been quite a whirlwind year since Cannes 2018,” says Xandr Chief Marketing Officer Kirk McDonald. What followed was Xandr’s […]

SANTA BARBARA, CA – When IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg contemplates the rebirth of AT&T’s advertising and media operations in the form of Xandr, he sees a looming competitor to the most powerful digital giants. “There’s no question that lots of folks in the marketing and media world would like more alternatives to Google and Facebook, […]

As it prepares to launch “a new kind of advertising company,” the AT&T Advertising and Analytics unit is doubling down on the attention economy and how marketers and publishers must harness data and technology to attain relevancy amid an explosion of consumer content choices. “There is almost infinite information fighting and competing for finite human […]

CANNES – On the heels of its court victory and completion of its acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T is flying a victory flag of sorts at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It bought advertising at the iconic Carlton Hotel that combines the traditional AT&T blue with bright coral that embodies “energy, passion, innovation,” […]

LAS VEGAS — Publishers’ marketing automation tech vendor PubMatic has announced it will power mobile advertising for German publisher Gruner + Jahr’s G+J eIMS ad sales division – but PubMatic has been going through some other changes of late. The G+J deal means PubMatic will help enable programmatic mobile ads for brands including Spiegel and Vodafone […]

While much has been said about the opportunities for publishers to create bespoke content for advertisers, for the medium to scale there needs to be standards so the units can be widely shared and sold programmatically,  says Kirk McDonald, President of PubMatic, a global adtech company that serves publishers, in this interview with Beet.TV We […]

LAS VEGAS — Pubmatic has long offered premium publishers the ability to sell their display and mobile ad inventory using real-time systems. Now it’s about to offer video ad sales in the same way, too. Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, the Redwood City- and New York-based company president Kirk McDonald tells Beet.TV Pubmatic will […]