Digiday Sunday
—Digiday Media buying and planning, whether coming out of the massive agency holding companies or independents, has traditionally been seen as less sexy – despite being the spenders of billions of dollars in marketing investment – than their creative or media counterparts. That seems to be changing as evidenced by our recent coverage of the sector which has been some of our most-read reporting. Cindy Rose started her job atop WPP as it tries to reimagine its performance and future as an AI and data platform. Our Media Buying Briefing, despite being a premium offering, has rocketed with readers. Two weeks ago, there was a piece on how holding company Dentsu was looking to divest its holdings outside of its home market of Japan and who might be suitors. Then this past week the MBB looked at what’s behind Publicis’ winning streak, a divided tale of best practices or sketchy dealings alleged by its envious rivals. The agency world is moving on from its legacy stance and we’ll continue to cover the investment, personalities and strategy that will try to take these dynamic businesses into the future. – James Cooper
Story highlights
Seb Joseph and Krystal Scanlon teamed up on the week’s most-read piece that reported that Netflix has turned to Amazon to help make its ads easier to buy, making inventory available via Amazon DSP. As they reported, ‘With that, Netflix checks the final box on its programmatic integration tour, now live across all the major buying platforms — Google DV360, The Trade Desk, Yahoo and Microsoft. But not all DSPs are built the same. Unlike the others, Amazon brings a layer the rest can’t match: commerce data. That gives advertisers something beyond just reach — signals they can actually use to power their ads on Netflix.’
Michael Burgi , as mentioned above, used his Media Buying Briefing lead for a very well-read analysis of the winning streak Publicis has recently enjoyed and what might be behind such a successful run of wins - its rivals are throwing shade on how it’s conducting business, but it is hard to ignore the results. As he reported, ‘Even if Publicis has resorted to means that its competitors either wish they could do or feel is “unethical,” as one rival put it, in order to win, it’s not losing them either. Which says something about what CEO Arthur Sadoun and company have put together.'
Seb Joseph reported on the contretemps in ad tech land in the wake of The Trade Desk reclassifying SSPs as “resellers” several weeks ago – it didn’t go over very well. As he reported, ‘When The Trade Desk reclassified SSPs as “resellers,” it wasn’t just a semantic shift — it was a signal. Under its media buying platform Kokai, those resellers are scored as less efficient, meaning they’ll see fewer ad dollars. Instead. The Trade Desk is rerouting more of those dollars through its own curated version of the open market of programmatic auctions and direct publisher deals.’ “The narrative that cutting out an SSP is somehow inherently more efficient is ignorant,” said Andrew Casale, CEO and president of giant SSP Index Exchange.
Sam Bradley published a well-read piece that looked at how retail media and CTV have given CPG brands an off ramp away from their long-running cookie dependence. As he reported, ‘With these advertisers looking towards other means of finding their target consumer, the third-party cookie is becoming all but obsolete, the last resort of brands taking a scattergun, imprecise approach to their programmatic activity. Data vendor and alternative ID provider ID5, for example, has seen an influx of CPG brands looking to improve their data solutions.’
Sara Guaglione ’s lead on her Media Briefing looked at how The Trade Desk’s relationship with publishers is shifting toward a softer touch and approach. As she reported, ‘The detente between the Trade Desk and publishers is starting to look less transactional… It’s a strategic recalibration for the ad tech vendor. With Amazon and Cognitiv making aggressive plays for publisher relationships, The Trade Desk is trying to secure premium inventory outside the walled gardens. It’s betting on doing so with OpenPath, its direct conduit to publishers that launched in 2022.’
Kimeko McCoy – as part of her hosting duties at Digiday Media’s Retail Media Advertising Strategies event in New York City on Sept. 10 – interviewed Khara Hutchinson, head of programmatic and integrated digital activation at Bayer, who was quite candid about the intricacies of being a healthcare company navigating a complex and booming retail media network ecosystem. As she reported in the lead into the discussion ‘retail media networks want brand dollars and brands want attribution metrics.’ And this from Hutchinson: “This is going to be the year where I don’t roll my eyes or make a snarky face when somebody talks about retail. I’ve done it most of the time.”
—We picked up a WorkLife piece by Tony Case that looked at how chief people officers are struggling to keep any semblance of DEI culture and initiatives in the present political climate – often having to reclassify or camouflage efforts to make their companies equitable and inclusive. As he reported, ‘Despite the challenges, many organizations are finding ways to continue their inclusion work under different frameworks. “We changed the nomenclature, but we’re still doing inclusion and culture. We embed the diversity piece into it — we just don’t call it out or flag it,” one executive said.
Kimeko McCoy ’s edition of the Digiday Podcast featured a discussion on the building concern about AI and its deprecation of publisher referral traffic. She was joined by Jessica Davies , Digiday’s senior media editor; Sara Guaglione , senior media reporter; and Tim Peterson , executive editor, video and audio, Digiday Media – all of whom have reported extensively on the zero-click story. Give a listen here
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“Quote” of the week
“The proportion of traffic that has originated from organic search… [for] some brands [that’s] already less than 20% of their audience…. Some are over 50%. So the brands that are over 50% obviously are more at risk than the others, so it just really depends on the brand.”
– Alysia Borsa , People Inc’s chief business officer and president of lifestyle, health and finance, on how some of its sites are more insulated from declining search referral traffic than others.
Here are the Digiday + Briefings for the week
See you next Sunday!