Business

In the latest episode of “Behind the Numbers,” eMarketer’s Ross Benes talks with Dave Pond, Vox Media’s general manager of display and programmatic, about how to improve the ad creative of automated advertising.

The two most talked-about sectors in audio today – podcasting and Smart Speakers – post significant gains in this year’s Infinite Dial study from Edison Research and Triton Digital.

In the face of rapidly evolving business and economic landscapes around the world, the importance of organizational intelligence and foresight thinking as a tool to unearth early indicators of change and unlock growth has never been greater. Many organizations are struggling with the accelerated pace of change and disruption from outside their traditional areas of influence.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative Director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• Twitter has posted a profit, finally, but it still shows various existential problems.
• 90% of its revenue comes from advertising sales.
• Risk is way too concentrated: it needs to put its eggs in different baskets.
• Plus, its users base is made up of mostly elderly curmudgeons.

For the first time in the history of Spanish-language television, Noticias Telemundo aired a conversation between the main news anchors from the country’s leading Hispanic networks: José Díaz-Balart, of Noticias Telemundo, and Jorge Ramos, of Univision Noticias. The full conversation, which took place at Books and Books bookstore in Coral Gables, Florida.

In tumultuous times, a company’s talent is its most valuable and reliable asset. What does it take to lead an organization that truly unleashes its human capital?  By Dominic Barton, Dennis Carey, and Ram Charan

Many global brands are facing the inescapable fact that it is a particularly tricky time to be in the consumer goods business. Following decades of solid and dependable growth, the future started getting hazy in 2012. That is when, despite steadily rising global demand, a series of events began taking a toll on large consumer products companies’ revenues and profits.  By Matthew Meacham, François Faelli, Eduardo Giménez and John Blasberg

March 8th was International Women’s Day and all of March is Women’s History Month, celebrating the achievements of women globally from cultural, political, social and economic perspectives. Yet where do women of color (as they’ve come to be called by, I guess, some inspired Caucasian) stand in my industry ―advertising― today?  By Daisy Expósito-Ulla, Chairman & CEO, d expósito & Partners

Mazda Motor Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation have established their new joint-venture company “Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, U.S.A., Inc.” (MTMUS) that will produce vehicles in Huntsville, Alabama starting in 2021.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the industry’s most prominent agency spokesman, now has the difficult job of explaining, on behalf of WPP and of the industry in general, why revenue growth has been so difficult to achieve and what can be done about it.  Since its peak in 2015, WPP shares have fallen 28% in value.  In the main, Sorrell points his finger at “major customers, who are holding back ad spending to cut costs, and the long-term impact of technological disruption and the short-term focus of zero-based budgeters, activist investors and private equity.” By Michael Farmer
 

Transparency is a big word for an important idea, but I’m curious if it will actually have an impact on the advertising business. If you casually peruse articles about advertising published in the last few years, you’ll see a steady increase in the volume of people talking about transparency, but if you dive one layer deeper, you’ll find it’s still just talk — not a business practice for most companies.

The wait is over for investors and Hispanic market observers who have been asking about Univision Communications‘ Initial Public Offering plan, and when the company targeting Hispanic and millennial consumers will come to fruition.  After a series of delays, there will be no IPO.  By Adam Jacobson

This year’s Oscars were dull.  No surprises.  Enough politics!  By David Morse / New America Dimensions

NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises announced the launch of Telemundo Academy, a first-ever multimedia educational institution to empower and train the next generation of media leaders. The academy’s first partners will include internationally renowned singer, actor and record producer Armando Christian Perez’s (Pitbull) SLAM Miami (Sports Leadership and Management) and the Doral Academy, two highly regarded local charter schools. 

The top three categories for Total U.S. ad spend are television, print-originated content and mobile.  They accounted for 73.9% of total U.S. ad spending in 2016.  TV and print totals include both legacy/linear and digital spend, while mobile spend is 100% digital.   By Jack Myers

Univision Communications Inc. (UCI) announced that Peter H. Lori has been named Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately.  Lori, who has served as Executive Vice President, Finance, Chief Accounting Officer and Deputy Chief Financial Officer for UCI, succeeds Francisco (Frank) J. Lopez-Balboa, who has decided to leave the company to pursue other opportunities. Lori will report to Randy Falco, President and Chief Executive Officer.

According to an analysis published by Jillian Berman, Georgetown University’s Center on Education, and the Workforce, though women are more likely to go to college and earn degrees than men, they don’t reap as large of a benefit from their education. Instead, says the report, women typically need one more degree to earn as much as men on average.

I was reading with huge interest Gonzalo López Martí’s last couple articles on the pros & cons of the different kinds of advertising providers a marketer can choose from and I think he missed one elephant in the room: consulting firms. You know: Accenture, Deloitte, PwC et al.  Allow me to share with you what I recently wrote about that the phenomenon. Here it goes.  By Santiago Olivera – President of Young & Rubicam Buenos Aires

You’ve seen the growth numbers. You’ve seen the purchasing power. You’ve seen the large multicultural successes in 2017 such as Coco. And you’ve been hearing it for years now. You know you have to start tapping into the multicultural market for the future of your brand or business. So what’s stopping you?

We’re moving from a time of scarcity to an era of abundance, experiencing megatrends that are changing commerce, transportation, and healthcare: connected consumers, on-demand services, internet-enabled connection and commerce.  So why do people wring their hands and get so worked up about the future of media? As it turns out, scarcity was perhaps the one thing that made media relevant, reliable, and even resilient.