Tag Archive: online

  1. 5G is coming – here’s what it means for marketers

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    AT&T and Verizon have announced 5G-enabled smartphones with Samsung for 2019 – 5G is here. Where will the new super-fast mobile internet connectivity take us?

    This week, both Verizon and AT&T have announced that they will launch 5G-enabled Samsung smartphones in 2019 – in fact, AT&T are launching two. 5G has been on the lips and the minds of the tech, communications and advertising industries for a while, promising as it does almost unimaginable opportunities. Earlier this year, AT&T launched its 5G mobile hotspot in a few cities across the US, but this week’s news makes it mainstream and a reality for consumers – and therefore marketers – across the world. So where will it lead?

    Higher speeds and happier consumers

    What makes 5G so revolutionary is its speed. 4G, which was launched in 2011, brought about video streaming, programmatic auctions and the first glimpses of augmented and virtual reality. 5G is 1000 times faster than 4G with 100 times less latency, effectively eliminating any delays. Often, if a consumer experiences a delay loading a webpage, they will give up, meaning the loss of a touchpoint for the brand. It could also lead to a decrease in the use of ad blockers, which consumers often use to avoid slow loading times; if webpages are loading more quickly, they may be less inclined to use them.

    The sheer speed of 5G means that it will be a viable and affordable alternative to home broadband. In the US, Verizon is looking at disrupting home broadband, particularly in areas where there isn’t much competition for local broadband providers. As Gartner’s Mark Hung remarked, ‘if 5G is able to create more competition in that space, then that could lead to more cord-cutters’ – and that of course has implications for marketers.

    Out of home will also benefit from the speed of 5G. A Digiday article relates how out of home advertising company Outfront plans to use 5G to distribute dynamic video to screens, which will be able to react to the viewers passing them.

    Deeper interactions with consumers – which means more data

    The increased speed of 5G compared to 4G means that technology applications which have hitherto seemed far-fetched are suddenly becoming realistic. These applications often provide much more immersive and meaningful experiences for consumers – and that means richer data sets for advertisers. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), for example, will become more normal ways for brands to interact with their consumers. AdWeek suggests that home decor

    brands could use immersive AR to show customers what an item of furniture would look like in their houses, while sports and music fans will be able to ‘attend’ games and gigs via their VR headsets; indeed, LiveNation and NextVR have already done this, and widespread 5G will only make the user experience better.

    Meanwhile, increased speeds and higher connectivity will mean that the Internet of Things becomes exponentially more powerful and useful. Hyper-connected devices will communicate with one other, giving the consumer increased convenience and control over their lives in the context of autonomous cars, connected homes, connected cities, connected healthcare and so many others. These networks of connected devices will generate a wealth of data on the consumer’s behaviours and preferences: a veritable goldmine for brands, who will be able to create ever more personalised and targeted messaging.

    Companies are already making plans to capitalise on the launch of 5G

    Unsurprisingly, given the opportunities for deeper interactions with consumers, companies in the US and worldwide are already gearing up for the delivery of 5G. For example, AT&T recently acquired Time Warner and AppNexus in order to ensure it was properly positioned to take advantage of the roll-out of its 5G service. Meanwhile, esports company ESL has partnered with AT&T to incorporate 5G technology into live gaming, in order to take mobile esports ‘to the next level’.

    5G may also have another effect. With telco companies coming into possession of such an unprecedented amount of consumer data, they may start being able to challenge the digital ad services duopoly currently held by Google and Facebook.

    We’ve looked at only a few of the opportunities presented by the arrival of 5G; indeed, there are many that the world hasn’t even imagined yet. It will change the world perhaps even more fundamentally than 4G did, and make the seemingly fantastical – for both consumers and advertisers – a reality.

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  2. Martin Sorrell’s ambitions for S4 Capital reflect a changing industry

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    Technology is dramatically transforming the communications industry – and S4 Capital is a reflection of that.

    When Martin Sorrell speaks, the advertising industry listens. That’s still the case even when he’s doing it as the head of a relatively small start-up, S4 Capital, rather than as the Chairman of WPP, the world’s largest communications conglomerate. Earlier this week he took to the stage at a Campaign Magazine event with his colleague Victor Knapp, the Chief Executive of MediaMonks, the content production company that S4 Capital acquired earlier this year. They discussed their ambitions for S4 Capital – some of which we will look at in more detail below; what is striking is that they are very much a reflection of how technology has transformed the media and advertising industries, fundamentally shifting priorities for brands and therefore for agencies. This change in direction is exemplified by the contrast between S4 Capital and the ‘traditional’ communications organisations such as Sorrell’s alma mater WPP.

    A digital and programmatic approach to media buying

    The ambitions that Sorrell and Knapp laid out for S4 Capital fall into four areas. The first is how S4 is approaching media buying. It’s telling that their first acquisition in this space is, according to Sorrell, likely to be in the digital and programmatic space, as ‘that’s where the biggest opportunity is’. Knapp added that the acquisition is likely to be a more ‘performance-based agency’, although he believes that ‘there is no difference between brand-building and performance’. There are many discussions at the moment around performance versus brand marketing – indeed, we wrote a blog about it and it was a hot topic at the ANA Masters of Marketing last month. Wherever you land in the debate, the inescapable fact is that data allows us to understand customers like never before and optimise activity to their preferences in real time; this has inevitably led to a focus on the performance of our media activity. Sorrell even went as far as to say that scale is not the most important thing anymore, as you can ‘make entries at a reasonable cost’ in the digital and programmatic arena. This demonstrates the impact that technology has had on the industry, if the size of your budget is no longer the sole most important aspect of your marketing strategy.

    A consumer-centric strategy calls for an always-on approach

    One of the key ramifications of the rapid advance of technology in the marketing space is that it has taken power out of the hands of brands and put it into those of the consumer. It is now the consumer that calls the shots, and advertisers must respond by focusing on the consumer’s experience of their brand and being ‘always on’. This is at the heart of MediaMonks and, by extension, S4 Capital’s approach to communications: it’s no longer about

    focusing on a big idea and creating 30-second spots. Brands and their agencies must consider how they can tell the best creative story across all platforms. This approach demands better, faster and more efficient content and, in Sorrell’s opinion, agencies aren’t responding quickly enough. This is the space that smaller, more agile companies like S4 can step into, as they come without the baggage of siloes, units and a plethora of agency brands.

    Helping brands to take control of their marketing services

    Data is, of course, the major marketing story of the 21st century so far and has fundamentally transformed how marketers operate, opening up a world of possibility and the opportunity to connect more deeply with consumers. It has also, unfortunately, led to issues of trust between advertisers and their agency partners, and a concern about a lack of control. This in turn has led many brands to at least consider bringing some of their marketing services in house and S4 Capital will have an offering that helps them to do that, although Sorrell pointed out that it can be difficult culturally for organisations to keep themselves and their talent abreast of the ever-changing market dynamics.

    As always, agility is the key to success

    It is telling that Sorrell and Knapp emphasised the importance of agility and consumer-centricity for S4 Capital. In the 80s, 90s and even 2000s, marketing was a very different affair and the role of the CMO was to relay stories to consumers on a one-way basis – and the likes of WPP, Omnicom and Publicis with their huge scale and buying power were well placed to support in that mission. However, technology has dramatically and fundamentally changed the landscape and the agencies that can respond rapidly in an agile, flexible manner are the ones who will stay relevant and useful for clients. This is clearly the space that Sorrell and Knapp are looking to occupy with S4 Capital, and we believe that they are well placed for success.

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  3. How smart speakers are changing the way we search and shop

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    Its Black Friday at the end of this week and bargain hunters across the US and Europe are readying themselves and their wallets to snap up bargains both online and in store. One thing that we can comfortably predict is that many will have their eye on a new smart speaker. The rise of the smart speaker over the last few years has been remarkable: in the US, an estimated 43.9m Americans used a smart speaker at least once a month in 2017, rising to 61.1m in 2018 and expected to increase to 76.5m by 2020 (source: eMarketer, 2018). This proliferation of smart speakers has inevitably fuelled a spike in voice search and voice commerce – and those, of course, have implications for marketers.

    Who’s using them?

    In May this year, eMarketer released its report,‘Hey Alexa, who’s using smart speakers?’. In it, the research firm points out that ‘not since the smartphone has any tech device been adopted as quickly as the smart speaker’. In fact, growth has been so strong that they predicted that the number of smart speaker users would surpass that of wearable users this year. The typical user is still the classic early tech-adopter – affluent, older millennial male – but the device is gaining traction in other demographics, particularly younger generation X women with children. What’s driving this surge? As eMarketer’s co-founder and Chief Content Officer Geoff Ramsey pointed out in his ‘Emerging Trends’ session at the ANA Masters of Marketing last month, it’s easier to talk to a device than to type into one and – crucially – smart speakers adapt to our voices and behaviour, not the other way around.

    The new battleground for the tech giants

    As is to be expected with any major technological development, the smart speaker has become the latest battleground for the tech giants, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. Facebook and Microsoft are still to make waves in the field: the former delayed the release of its smart speaker due to user privacy concerns (understandable, given the year it has had), while Microsoft has partnered with another hardware maker instead of creating an own-brand speaker. Apple released its HomePod speaker, but the high price point and less-than-glowing reviews means it is yet to be a major player, in this space at least. That leaves Google and Amazon as the undisputed kings of the smart speaker arena. Google’s Google Home has a 29.5% share of the market, but eMarketer projected that Amazon Echo – of Alexa fame – would claim 66.6% of the smart speaker market in 2018.

    Transforming how we shop…

    As we discussed in an earlier post, Amazon is well on its way to adding a third leg to the Facebook-Google digital duopoly by increasing its advertising revenue – and its Echo smart speaker is a key way in which it will achieve this. eMarketer points out that voice is the next frontier for online commerce, and while the number of people who shop using their purchases is small (28.2% of US smart speaker owners), they predict that the number of US smart speaker buyers will double to 17.2 million between 2017 and 2018. And it is of course Amazon that benefits from this, thanks to their success in the smart speaker space and their dominance of the general ecommerce space. Echo owners can and do shop using Amazon Prime: indeed, they spend an average of $1700 a year, according to a CIRP report. That’s $400 higher than what ‘regular’ Prime customers spend annually on Amazon and 66% higher than non-Prime Amazon shoppers. CIRP’s co-founder Josh Lowitz said “We’ve long thought that Amazon is keenly focused on building increasingly loyal and frequent shopping customers, and Echo seems to promote that goal.” Brands can also create third-party apps; however, many are choosing to do this with Google Home rather than Alexa so they don’t have to compete with Amazon’s inventory.

    …and how we search

    That’s not the only way that Google may have an edge over the thus-far dominant Echo. The second most popular way that consumers use their smart speakers, after music, is search. Ramsey noted that 72% of US smart speaker users who have a smart device use them to search – it’s the second most popular activity after listening to music, and that doesn’t even include the news, weather or traffic. One third of users use them every day to search for something that they would previously have typed into a device. The implications of this for brands are particularly important. Why’s that? Because voice search usually only yields one result: consumers don’t want to listen to reams of results, and that actually could be a reason that they are choosing to use their smart speaker rather than traditional methods, so that they don’t have to sift through results. Furthermore, they don’t have to stop what they are doing.

    A voice search optimisation strategy

    The fact that there is only one search result on smart speakers means that brands either get first position or no position: it’s critically important that they start developing a solid voice search optimisation strategy to take them to the top of the search results. Econsultancy suggests that an effective way to do this is to help people when they need support with a specific task, such as cooking or trying to remove a stain – what Google has termed a ‘micro-moment’. That fits in with Ramsey’s view that voice is not just another ad vehicle – it’s a utility, and advertisers need to see it as a personalised experience that will bring consumers closer to their brand. Voice can be used to literally start a conversation with a consumer and ultimately set them along the path to purchase. As far as paid search is concerned, sponsored ad words aren’t yet available but that can surely only be a matter of time.

    Will mobile ads be impacted?

    Something else that brands need to bear in mind is that, as consumers are increasingly drawn consumers away from their mobile devices by smart speakers, they will be exposed to fewer mobile ads. We believe that it is unlikely that Amazon and Google will allow brands to ‘broadcast’ ads via their smart speakers; could this mean that digital advertising will start to see a decline?

    Agility and readiness are critical

    As the tech giants look to implement their voice assistants into other gadgets, household appliances, furniture and even cars, the opportunities for brands to become intrinsically valuable and useful to the consumer grows. With that opportunity comes complexity that will need to be navigated. As Ramsey pointed out, even the pneumonics of brand and product names will need to be considered! There is much to be gained by those who are most agile and can stay ahead.

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  4. The evolution of the role of the marketer – and what that means for the future of the industry

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    The role of the marketer has changed almost unrecognisably over the last four decades. As technology has progressed and our tools have advanced, we have a greater understanding of our audiences and how our messages are landing with them. This can and does drive increased performance for both the media and, ultimately, the brand. However, it also adds many layers of complexity to the marketer’s role: today’s marketer not only needs to be able to tell great stories, they need to be able to understand data, numbers and technology – or surround themselves with people who do.

    The 1980s: WHAT to say?

    The 80s were perhaps the last time that advertising resembled the fabled ‘Mad Men’ era. In the ‘brand positioning’ decade, marketers had the freedom to be creative and tell stories that would catch the audience’s attention, cutting through the noise to drive loyalty and recognition. There were far fewer channels to orchestrate; TV ruled the day, with out of home and radio jostling for position as well. Direct marketing had started to emerge, but was in its infancy. Most importantly, communication largely ran one way – from brand to consumer – meaning that the brand, and the marketer, held the power over messaging and could decide whatstories to tell.

    The 1990s: WHEN and WHERE to place ads?

    The 1980s became the 1990s, which were something of a watershed moment for the advertising industry. Why? Because it was the decade that saw the very first digital advertising: US communications giant AT&T placed the first digital banner on hotwired.com – Wired Magazine’s online platform – in 1994. What’s more, the proliferation of cable TV and the increased length of ad breaks (up from nine minutes per hour to nineteen). The advertising landscape had become rapidly more complex, and the marketer’s role had changed forever.

    This plethora of ad spaces had an important implication: it meant that the marketer could – and indeed needed to – optimise their media planning and buying strategies so that they were reaching their audiences in the optimal time and place. Whenandwhereto place ads were the key questions of the day: this meant adding more skills to the arsenal, such as the ability to understand and act upon ‘web analytics’ – the precursor to digital marketing optimisation.

    The 2000s: HOW much?

    If the 1990s was the birth of the digital advert, the 2000s were the decade that procurement-driven marketing was born. It was then that procurement processes were introduced to marketing, leading to increased control of – and therefore more focus on – pricing and effectiveness. This is undoubtedly intrinsically linked to the rise of the media buying houses – off-shoots from the creative agencies who were channelling their media planning and buying capabilities into separate entities. These entities would buy up huge amounts of inventory and sell it on to their clients, driving down prices. Procurement professionals were brought in to ensure that brands were getting the best deal from their agencies, resulting in pitches that were run on excel sheets rather than judged on relationships and strategy. The pressure on marketers and agencies to keep asking ‘howmuch?’ was intense, and has arguably not eased since.

    The 2010s: WHO are we reaching?

    The 2010s is the decade of the data-driven marketer. The most important marketing trends of the decade – data and technology – have transformed the practice of marketing. Modern tools allow marketers to understand their consumers like never before, optimising for their behaviour and preferences in real time and watching money come in in a way that is beyond the

    80s marketer’s wildest dreams. However, it hasn’t all been positive: transparency has decreased, leading to a crisis of trust between brands and their agencies, and there are grave concerns around data ownership and regulation – as some of the tech giants have discovered to their detriment.

    Who to reach – the individual – is now the priority, often at the expense of the mass-media, storytelling approach of the 1980s that built the strong brands of today. The focus has shifted to performance for each and every ad dollar and the cost per acquisition, rather than telling a brand story that leads to loyalty and trust. As we learned at the ANA Masters of Marketing conference last month, direct to consumer(DTC/D2C) brands are winning at the performance game, and more traditional brands can learn a lot from them. However, we mustn’t lose sight of the fact of the end destination – brand and business growth. Data and transparency are only the vehicles to get us there and are not the destination itself.

    The 2020s: what should we be asking ourselves?

    What does all this mean for the marketer as we approach the 2020s? Will there be a new paradigm? At ECI Media Management, we believe that marketers are now like the conductor of an orchestra: the instruments are in place, and the CMO is the conductor who is responsible for leading them to create the great symphony. An effective media strategy needs to ask ‘WHAT should we say?’, ‘WHERE and WHEN should we say it?’, ‘HOW much should it cost?’ and ‘WHO are we saying it to?’ in order to secure the highest ROI.

    Marketers must define KPIs based on a clear marketing objective linked to business growth, so that all stakeholders, brand owners, media planners and buyers, procurement leads and tech and data experts share the same language and have one version of the truth to work towards. The theme of this year’s ANA Masters of Marketing was ‘driving growth’, and ANA CEO Bob Leodice, opened the conference with a rallying cry: it is within the power of CMOs to recover growth, particularly with so many tools, skills and technology at their fingertips. Harnessing the lessons of the last three decades – telling a brand story, optimising time and placement, achieving the best cost and using data to understand the consumer is surely the way to do this.

    ECI Media Management can help marketers conduct the orchestra and position themselves for success. We forensically audit and benchmark all media activity, including (and uniquely) programmatic investments, to drive higher media value and increase the impact of media on business performance.  As well as helping to manage media agency partners, we can offer advice to marketers looking to increase control by bringing more agency services in-house. Along with our other services– financial compliance audit, pitch management and contract consultancy –  we can ensure that the modern marketer has all the tools at their disposal for success and growth in the 2020s and beyond.

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  5. Amazon is coming for your ad dollars

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    The online shopping platform has streamlined its advertising offering, making it a real threat for Google and Facebook.

    Turning the duopoly into a triopoly

    When we think of major digital ad platforms, our thoughts naturally turn to the giants, Google and Facebook. There is no doubting that for many years the ‘big two’ have had a duopoly of advertisers’ digital budgets across much of the world. Google’s ad revenue in quarter two of this year was a huge $28 billion, while Facebook’s was a smaller but still very sizeable $13 billion, of which 15% was generated by Instagram. We’ve discussed in our blog before how Facebook seems to be struggling to grow in the face of privacy scandals and user stagnation and, conversely, how Google appears to go from strength to strength.

    However, there is a third player that’s turning the duopoly into a triopoly. A report published by eMarketer in September revealed that Amazon will more than double its US digital ad revenues this year, meaning it will overtake Oath and Microsoft to become the third largest digital advertising platform. This news came as Amazon revealed that it had streamlined its somewhat messy advertising offering into a single brand, Amazon Advertising.

    Amazon’s key advantage is its deep understanding of consumer purchasing habits

    Amazon Advertising’s model is based on the fact that around 49% of product searches in the US start on Amazon – and that offers invaluable insights into the minds of purchasers. While Google can store your implicit shopping intention, Amazon knows your actual purchasing behaviour – what you bought, when you bought it, how many clicks it took you and what other product categories you bought or considered at the same time. These insights can be used to create intelligent retargeting campaigns that showcases products that the consumer is more likely to buy at a specific time. With the drive towards Amazon Prime and the purchase of Whole Foods, those insights can become even more pertinent. Furthermore, ads on Amazon can be optimised within a matter of hours, allowing advertisers to drive a much higher return on their investment.

    Advertisers are moving budgets from Google search into Amazon ads

    It is these razor-sharp insights and real-time optimisation that are the headache for Google and Facebook, particularly the latter. Media agency executives have revealed that some

    advertisers are moving more than half the budget that they would normally invest with Google Search (an estimated 83% of Google’s ad revenues) into Amazon ads, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. The brands in question are almost all from the consumer product goods category, whose products are sold on the Amazon platform, and are attracted by the offering discussed above as well as the seamless shopping experience: there’s no need to set up an account or input card details, as there might be with a Google search ad. Amazon is also unburdened by the fake news problems that have dogged Facebook and, as an apolitical space, it is unlikely to be leveraged as a political tool.

    Will the lure of profit be at the expense of user experience?

    It’s possible, even likely that Amazon will be bewitched by the huge profits that can be won from advertising, at the expense of the user experience. The purchasing behaviour data that Amazon has at its fingertips means that they can develop much better targeting tools than Facebook – and just as good as Google’s. Highly effective branding campaigns therefore become a reality, and while the consumer could find these at best a distraction and at worst disturbing, it will be difficult for Amazon to resist short-term profit for something in which it is unbeatable.

    Google and Facebook are safe for now – but challenging times are ahead

    Google and Facebook aren’t in any immediate danger. Amazon is a distant third in the triopoly: it commands 4.1% of digital ad spend in the US, compared to Facebook’s 20.6% and Google’s 37.1%. And while Google’s Search revenues may be flattening somewhat, some of the drift is going into other Google properties such as YouTube, and not just Amazon’s coffers. Furthermore, brands from very lucrative advertising categories such as automotive and travel don’t currently have much incentive to move any investment to Amazon as their products are not easily sellable on the platform.

    Challenging times are ahead for Google and Facebook, in this and many respects. Amazon is certainly one to watch in this space.

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  6. Facebook’s woes show no sign of abating

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    A massive security breach is just the latest chapter in a bad year for the tech giant.

    After a bad year, Facebook needed to regain its users’ trust

    The fourth quarter of 2018 started at the beginning of this week, and there are probably few people who are looking forward to turning their backs on 2018 more than Mark Zuckerberg. This year has been something of an ‘annus horribilis’ for the Facebook CEO. Having perhaps thought that the worst was behind him with Russian interference in the US presidential campaign, the social media platform was hit with accusations that it had allowed Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, to harvest data from up to 87 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica then used that data in the campaign that helped elect Donald Trump to the US presidency. This, along with the introduction of GDPR in the European Union, was blamed for Facebook losing daily active users in Europe, flatlining in North America and the resultant slow-down in revenue growth in Q2 of this year. The conclusion? Facebook needed to work on regaining its users’ trust in order to guarantee its future prosperity.

    And then, 50 million user accounts are hacked

    Unfortunately, things sometimes don’t go according to plan. Last week, Facebook discovered its most severe security breach to date, impacting 50 million user accounts. The ‘view as’ tool lets users understand their privacy settings: a bug allowed hackers to use this functionality to take over user accounts, meaning they could see everything in the user’s profile and, potentially, in any third party sites that users logged into with their Facebook accounts, for example Tinder, Airbnb and Spotify. Facebook acted to secure these accounts but the damage has been done: Zuckerberg said ‘I’m glad that we found this and were able to fix the vulnerability, but it is definitely an issue that it happened in the first place.’ What’s more, this is the second serious security breach for Facebook in recent months – in June, a bug made 14 million people’s private posts publicly viewable to anyone.

    A test of the EU’s GDPR

    While it is estimated that only 10% of users affected by this month’s breach were in the European Union, it is the EU that is the biggest headache for Facebook in this saga. GDPR requires companies that store the data of European citizens to declare any security breaches of this nature within 72 hours: Facebook notified the Irish Data Protection Commission which is now assessing whether it needs to carry out an enquiry. If it does, and Facebook is found to have been negligent in its duty of care for customer data, it could face a maximum fine of 4% of its annual global turnover – $1.63 billion. This is the first major test of GDPR, but the EU does have form for implementing large penalties to tech companies. It fined Google $2.8bn in 2017 for violating antitrust rules with its online shopping practices, and earlier this year slapped the tech giant with a $5 billion fine for abusing its power to force smartphone operators to pre-install Google search apps on any phone using the Android operating system.

    A battle on many fronts

    Facebook is under fire from many fronts – federal investigations into its privacy and data-sharing practices, the possibility of increased regulation from the US congress following high-profile hearings on the privacy practices of the big tech companies – and now this latest fiasco.

    Regain trust to keep advertisers

    The priority for Zuckerberg as he looks to 2019 and beyond must be to regain the trust of users around the world. Consumers are increasingly wary of the big tech companies and how they use their data, and if they start to log off in their droves, advertising dollars will follow them.

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  7. In the news this week: Comcast wins Sky bid, and Instagram founders resign

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    There’s never a quiet moment in the media industry, and this week was no exception, with two major pieces of news that could have major ramifications for advertisers, albeit in very different ways.

    Comcast gains full control of Sky

    On 22ndSeptember, it was announced that Comcast, the American telecommunications giant that offers digital cable TV, internet and telephony services, had won the bidding for Sky, at a cost of $38.8 billion, beating 21stCentury Fox. Four days later it emerged that Fox would also be ceding its pre-existing 39% ownership to Comcast for $15 billion, giving full control of Sky to Comcast.

    A year of mega-deals

    This is the latest in a series of ‘mega deals’ over the last 12 months, where content distributors and creators are merging in an attempt to confront the existential threat posed by the rapidly growing streaming companies such as Netflix, and the tech giants who are ‘scope creeping’ into TV; in June, AT&T acquired Time Warner for $85 billion, and the following month Disney beat Comcast to buy 21stCentury Fox for $71 billion. In an industry quirk, it was then Comcast who effectively beat Disney, as 21stCentury Fox’s new owners, to the purchase of Sky; Sky was originally going to be part of the deal that sold 21stCentury Fox to Disney.

    A global footprint and more original content for Comcast

    Comcast’s purchase of Sky will be a major boost to their global footprint: Sky has 23 million subscribers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy, and has launched an over-the-top service in Spain and Switzerland, meaning Comcast will be better equipped to fend off the likes of Netflix and other tech giants. The acquisition also bolsters Comcast’s original content capabilities: Ovum’s chief entertainment analyst, Ed Barton, said ‘they could look at licensing content on a combined basis, which would lower the cost on a per-subscriber basis, if you have something you can show to a European and US audience.’ This merging of content would also mean a larger library to leverage as they roll out into other markets globally.

    Combining technical know-how

    The cultural affinity between Sky and Comcast could also be important for advertisers; it is likely, even inevitable, that they will combine their technical and data assets to forge ahead with an addressable advertising offering which will make TV as targeted as online.

    Instagram founders announce their resignation

    The other big news for the media and tech industries this week was the departure of Instagram’s co-founders from the company, which they announced on Tuesday and which sent Facebook’s share price tumbling. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded Instagram in 2010, before selling it two years later to Facebook for $1 billion – an almost unprecedented amount for a two-year-old start-up. It has since become the jewel in Facebook’s crown and its fastest growing revenue generator.

    A snub to Zuckerberg?

    Sysrom and Krieger said that they were leaving the company to explore their ‘curiosity and creativity again’.  That is being seen by many as a veiled snub to Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg, who have made a raft of unpopular changes to Instagram, in many cases in an attempt to boost traffic to the core Facebook platform. Sysrom and Krieger wouldn’t be the only ones to leave following differences with the Facebook CEO – last year, WhatsApp founder Jan Joum quit over privacy disagreements with his bosses, who were keen to monetise the service.

    Monetising the jewel in Facebook’s crown

    As discussed at length in the press and in previous ECI Thinks posts, Facebook has in recent years been battered by criticism of its approach to data privacy, fake news allegations and for allowing foreign interference into national election campaigns – and its user base is showing signs of disengagement as a result. Instagram has largely escaped these problems: it has more than a billion active monthly users and successful updates such as its stories feature, messaging and IGTV have seen off competitors from the likes of Snapchat. In this context, it’s unsurprising that Zuckerberg and his team are so keen to squeeze as many ad dollars as possible out of Instagram; Lynette Luna, a principal analyst at GlobalData, said “Facebook’s strategy has been to allow companies it has purchased to operate independently to garner growth, and then monetise. When they start monetising that’s when there’s a little conflict with the founders.” Systrom and Krieger may well have wanted to retain the independence to run Instagram as they wanted.

    It is not yet known who will replace Systrom and Krieger, but it will be interesting to see if changes to Instagram, particularly to its revenue model and integration with Facebook, accelerate in the wake of their departure

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  8. The effectiveness battle: performance marketing versus brand marketing

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    One of the key themes at DMEXCO earlier this month was the effectiveness of performance marketing versus brand marketing, and the related tension between offline and online marketing.

    A trending topic

    A week or so ago, ECI attended DMEXCO in Cologne, and there was a lot to take in from the 1000 exhibitors on over 100,000sqm of exhibition space! We shared our summary of what we learned straight after it finished, but there is one topic that particularly piqued our interest that we explore in more detail in this article. That topic? The trends and debate around the effectiveness of brand marketing compared to performance marketing and the related tension between offline and online advertising.

    Short-term results versus long-term relationships

    As online media generates a vastly larger amount of data than traditional media, and much more rapidly, it is tempting to find ways to obtain higher click and conversion rates from digital campaigns. Marketers and their bosses have always been under pressure to prove the impact of marketing and, ideally, to cut out the parts of a media plan that aren’t working as hard as others. Performance marketing is a relatively new term for short-term, sales-driving online marketing that often uses layers of data and targeting to ensure that as few impressions as possible are served to people who are unlikely to register a conversion that can be attributed to the campaign in question. Performance marketing therefore contrasts directly with traditional brand marketing, for which TV is still a key channel. Brand marketing techniques are the result of decades of academic research which have concluded that high brand equity – and resulting long-term sales growth – are the result of moderately frequent messaging that resonates thanks to evocative creative. Those fundamental truths have not changed with the invention of online media spaces. However, it might never be possible to prove a direct and independent cause-and-effect relationship between a specific ad impression and a sale. So while brand marketing is great for building consumer relationships, it’s difficult for any responsible marketer to turn down a form of marketing that actually has the word ‘performance’ in it!

    The word on the street at DMEXCO

    At DMEXCO, the advantages of both brand and performance marketing were covered in detail – with tools to support the latter dominating the exhibition floors of the expo, while the advantages of a more sustained brand marketing strategy were extolled on the stages of the conference. There has long been feisty and fascinating debate between marketers about which should be given the lion’s share of a marketer’s budget, especially their online media budget. At the DMEXCO debate entitled ‘How marketers can be enlightened, empowered and enabled in a mobile world’, the MMA’s Chris Babayode explained how conversion attribution modelling accentuates the tension between performance marketing (the champion of last touch attribution) and brand marketing (which looks better when using multiple touch attribution).

    Last touch attribution of conversions for example is a common, simple method. It tends to demonstrate that methods such as search and retargeting generate a large number of conversions, leading many marketers to shift significant budget into these areas. Multiple touch attribution, on the other hand, recognizes that a click on a Google search link is not itself the cause of a conversion, and that various recent campaigns and on- and offline touchpoints should be taken into account. Multiple touch attribution can, for example, reveal what audiences and what sites will generate conversions further down the road.

    Don’t pick sides

    An interesting take on the debate appeared in an article by Mark Ritson in Marketing Week last month. It’s a well thought-through piece which we strongly recommend that any marketer

    reads, but Ritson’s conclusion is that, in fact, marketers shouldn’t pick sides: the best way forward for your business in the long term and the short term is to keep up a traditional mix of more long-term branding and more short-term sales promotion. Ritson quotes Peter Field and Les Binet’s book The Long and Short of It: you want ‘60% of your budget invested in long-term brand building and 40% on more immediate activation’.

    The effect of GDPR

    It is interesting to see how the introduction of GDPR in the European Union has further blurred the line between the trackability of off- and online channels and therefore the distinction between which should be used for performance or brand marketing purposes. Many people have stopped allowing brands to track their data, meaning there is, and will continue to be, a large market for non-trackable impressions that are therefore similar to offline impressions. This shift in supply and demand is a huge, although likely temporary, opportunity. Several speakers at DMEXCO remarked on the drop in programmatic supply after GDPR was rolled out in May this year – despite the fact that media consumption of course didn’t drop.  It’s all about choosing the right media for the right job – a truism that was illustrated perfectly by the exhibitors of some of the world’s most advanced ad tech companies using paper fliers for their marketing at DMEXCO!

    Demonstrating how online can be an effective channel for brand marketing campaigns

    An interesting case study into how effectively online platforms can be used for brand campaigns was highlighted in the YouTube-hosted event ‘How consumer choice has changed the video landscape’ by Johnson & Johnson’s Northern Europe Marketing Director Meghan Davis. She related the story of how J&J briefed a few different creative agencies to create an ad, independently of one another, using the same dental hygiene brief. All three resulting videos were then tested on YouTube and the one that performed the best was run on a wider scale. This brilliant campaign showcases how using quick-effect metrics and the flexibility of online media can improve the impact of a branding campaign across both online and offline; and demonstrates how live data can inform decisions to optimize a campaign and maximize its short- and long-term impact. We believe that this is an online strategy that could be adopted by more marketers looking at how online media can be leveraged for brand campaigns.

    As is so often the case with advertising, the answer to the brand marketing versus performance marketing conundrum is not binary. The best results lie in achieving the right balance: as Ritson says, ‘a great brand plan will deliver short-term results within the year and set up longer-term, enduring advantage from stronger brand equity and improved funnel conversions. A great brand plan manages to hit short-term sales targets while also funding longer-term brand objectives that focus on brand health metrics.’ That means just the right mix of on- and offline channels, working in harmony to drive brand equity and meet sales targets. And to achieve that holy grail, robust strategies and creative messages and visuals that resonate, backed up with insight and measured with the right KPIs, are of critical importance.

    To see how ECI can help you to obtain the perfect balance, contact us at value@ecimm.com.

    Thumbnail image: Shutterstock

  9. ECI’s DMEXCO download

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    ECI was at DMEXCO in Cologne this week: from ethical hackers to in-housing, here’s what we learned.

    Important questions and lots of answers

    ECI joined thousands of fellow ad industry professionals at DMEXCO in the German city of Cologne this week. The digital marketing and advertising trade fair and conference has become a key feature on advertisers’ calendars as they seek to understand and capitalise on the countless opportunities – and avoid the pitfalls – offered by ad tech. There are so many questions on these people’s minds – should I bring my ad tech in house? Who are the right suppliers? How can I best leverage my company’s proprietary data? If the answers to these questions are anywhere, it’s at DMEXCO – although you have to filter out a lot of noise on the way…

    We came away from our two days at DMEXCO with two big takeaways. The first is how cluttered the marketplace is and the (perhaps related) knowledge gaps, particularly among those who should really know better. The second – quite possibly a result of the first, as we’ll discuss later – is the debate around inhousing ad tech versus outsourcing it.

    A cluttered marketplace and knowledge gaps

    DMEXCO is crowded, noisy, hot and very exciting – much like the industry that it showcases! As we found while we were there, the more you learn, the more you realise just how much there is to learn, and the effort required to keep up with the latest developments in online marketing. As is so often the case in the digital world and particularly the digital marketing industry, buzz words and phrases were swirling around – ‘performance marketing’, ‘attribution’, ‘intelligent’, ‘data’, ‘personalisation’ and ‘disruption’. Our old friend ‘email marketing’ is still up there, with general consensus that it remains an important tool. The new phrase on everyone’s lips – one to watch out for – is ‘ethical hacker’, the information security experts who identify vulnerabilities that non-ethical hackers could exploit: critically important in these times of cyber threats and security breaches. We observe, with a wry smile, that DMEXCO is perhaps the only place where the words ‘AI’, ‘machine learning’, ‘algorithm’, ‘performance’ and ‘optimisation’ can be used in the same sentence unironically.

    Despite this lack of irony, there was some healthy scepticism at the conference. Taking to the stage in the event ‘The next mission in marketing’, Philipp Markmann talked about the ‘absurd level of complexity’ in the media market, with far too many services to choose from, meaning that advertisers are overwhelmed by choice. Is this because publishers and vendors are targeting and talking directly with CMOs rather than focusing on agencies, who traditionally identified the best solutions on their clients’ behalf?

    Perhaps this is partly down to surprisingly low levels of knowledge in the industry. A common opening line from exhibitors at DMEXCO was “do you know a bit about ad tech?” We raised this with one of them who explained that a large proportion of attendees had a lower than expected knowledge of ad tech and digital advertising. AppNexus, one of the largest ad tech suppliers which was recently sold for $1.6bn, was mistaken for an app creator by more than one attendee, while one ad tech exhibitor said that they met with a media agency rep who didn’t know the difference between a first and second price auction, let alone the implications of each. There is evidence that the struggles, illustrated here, to keep up with online media markets are leading to irresponsible media buying, ultimately resulting in advertisers taking matters into their own hands by bringing their activity in house. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD. vTFCgkT6VUuBkosD.

    In-housing or outsourcing?

    It was no surprise, therefore, that the in-housing of media buying was the subject of many of the events and discussion at DMEXCO. It’s being driven by a feeling that media agencies need to be doing more to earn their clients’ trust, but also by the understanding that marketing and sales in general, and online marketing in particular, should be closely integrated with a brand’s core business – especially when it comes to technology and strategy. Philips’ global head of digital marketing Blake Cahill, speaking at an event entitled ‘Brave the seismic shift – the future of creative digital consultancy’, recommended a mix of in-house and agency, with the latter focusing on media strategy and planning. This consultancy role would allow them to increase their fee – a glimmer of hope for agencies alarmed by clients taking activity in house. Meanwhile, in ‘The next mission in marketing’ event, speakers concluded that, in order to thrive into the future, agencies need to be experts, strategic and proactive thinkers, and reduce their complexity. Interestingly, as we reported last week, WPP’s new CEO, Mark Read, announced this as part of his strategy to future-proof the group.

    Media and creative agencies were notably quiet at DMEXCO – is that because of the problems they are having keeping abreast of developments in the space? Advertisers and publishers, as well as Google and Facebook, were prominent on the stages, while ad tech providers and publishers dominated the exhibition floors.

    But that’s not all

    Of course, discussion at DMEXCO also went far beyond whether advertisers will move their tech stacks in house and what that means for their agency partners and others. To succeed in digital advertising, marketers must ‘focus on the real consumer needs, understanding their behaviour’, as Alexander Ewig said in ‘The next mission in marketing’ talk. Rahmyn Kress, Henkel’s Chief Digital Officer and Debora Koyama, Mondelez’s CMO, also spoke about what success looks like in digital marketing at the ‘Future skills in brand marketing: how to transform into a modern marketing department’ event. They agreed that the FMCG sector is lagging behind when it comes to digital marketing, and that they – and all brands – must focus on the problem they want to solve, rather than the tools at their disposal. Kress and Koyama also concurred that data must be at the very heart of digital marketing; this is indisputable, but there was also a feeling across DMEXCO that advertisers should seek a balance between hard data and a more human gut feeling.

    A final observation has to, of course, come from Google. Their space on the exhibition floor was colourful, eye-catching and designed to look like a garden, complete with a wooden fence around the perimeter. A witty take perhaps on how Google and fellow tech giant Facebook are often called walled gardens for their reluctance to allow third-party tracking? We mentioned this comparison to a Google rep outside the fence, who laughed and then gave a very reasonable explanation for the fence: some advertiser heavy-weights were inside, making important deals with Google. Funny that in our world of AI-optimisation, data driving and agile bidding, business is still done over coffee and sealed with a handshake.

    Thumbnail image: Helene Kruse

  10. New WPP chief hits the ground running

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    WPP has filled its CEO vacancy – and there’s a lot to do.

    A popular choice to fill big shoes

    Since Martin Sorrell’s acrimonious departure from the top job at WPP earlier this year, there has naturally been speculation around who would replace him. Charismatic and combative, and the chief architect of WPP’s growth from a wire and plastics company into the world’s largest advertising company, Sorrell left big shoes to fill.

    WPP announced this week that those shoes have been filled by Mark Read, who had been running the organisation on an interim basis, alongside Andrew Scott, since Sorrell’s departure. Read is a popular choice both within WPP and among shareholders, and was the leading internal candidate for the role. He has a proven track record in running WPP digital agency Wunderman, as well as in digital leadership and as a board member from 2006 to 2015. He is viewed as a steady pair of hands and someone who can hit the ground running – perhaps less charismatic and pugnacious than his predecessor, but that is widely seen as a good thing.

    Read has industry challenges to contend with…

    Read has his work cut out for him. The day after his appointment was announced, WPP suffered a sharp drop in share price, and the company recently announced a somewhat mixed set of results, with a small Q2 global revenue growth of 2.4% but a continued decline in its North American business, which dropped by 2.9%.  WPP is suffering from many of the same problems as its industry peers, including navigating the seismic shifts that the advertising industry is experiencing thanks to rapidly advancing technology. Many clients are looking to take at least some of their marketing activity in-house, forcing agencies and in particular media agencies to re-examine what the future looks like. Those that aren’t yet taking their activity in-house are simultaneously cutting costs and demanding greater transparency in the wake of brand safety scandals and the like. Furthermore, a new generation of competitors is springing up: not just the small boutique and niche agencies, but also in the form of companies such as Accenture and other consultancies, who are establishing capabilities in high margin marketing services such as data and programmatic

    …and in-house problems too

    Read’s challenges aren’t just those faced by the advertising industry at large: WPP has its own set of unique issues to resolve. It is famously huge, with hundreds of agency brands across the world, more than could ever be needed to manage conflict and who indeed often compete with one another. The many P&Ls

    make it unwieldy and, crucially, ‘impenetrable to understand’ for clients, in Read’s words. This is a major cause of concern for some of the group’s key clients such as P&G and Unilever, while Ford – WPP’s biggest client – announced earlier this year a review of its global creative business, currently handled by GTB, the dedicated agency established by WPP for the automotive brand.

    ‘Radical evolution’ is needed

    In response to WPP’s issues and in order to future-proof the organisation, Read has announced a ‘radical evolution’ strategy that will streamline WPP’s structure, consolidating some of the 170,000-strong workforce across 112 countries and 3000 offices. As Read said, “WPP needs to come closer together, not further apart. There are many good things about the business. It is a question of simplifying the offer, refocusing the portfolio and investing more in data and technology alongside creativity.”

    Read has ample experience in the digital side of the WPP business, and his transformation strategy includes turning WPP’s approach to how it works with data and tech on its head. He recognised that, in a world where the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Alibaba own the lion’s share of consumer data, the most realistic way for WPP to monetise its data capabilities is to effectively borrow data from the tech companies and charge clients for data consultancy, rather than execution. GroupM agency MediaCom is already progressing in this area.

    Other elements of Read’s approach include actively helping clients take elements of their marketing in house by consulting on the strategy rather than focusing on the execution; and management of their data investment or research portfolio – it appears likely that Kantar Media could be sold in the not-too-distant future.

    The keys to success: steady hands and an open mind

    Mark Read is stepping to the fore at a time when strong winds are buffeting WPP and the wider advertising industry. However, a combination of steady hands at the helm and a willingness to transform the organisation’s structure and model could well be just what WPP needs to stay on course.

    Thumbnail image: Shutterstock.com

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