Business

Veo, a new app for the U.S. Hispanic audience, provides a direct channel for major brands to engage with thousands of consumers.

Entravision Communications Corporation announced that Jeffery A. Liberman, Chief Operating Officer at Entravision was honored with the 2014 Medallas de Cortez Award for Broadcaster of the Year.  

Austin Specialty Foods is leading the mission to bring authentic “real Mexican beer,” defined as brewed and owned by Mexicans rather than multi-national European beer, back to the U.S. market starting with the launch of the Company’s premium authentic brewed-in-Mexico beer brands, Mexicali Cerveza and Day of the Dead Craft Beer, in Austin.

This past October, eight executives from companies that are leaders in data analytics got together to share perspectives on their biggest challenges. All were the most senior executives with data-analytics responsibility in their companies, which included AIG, American Express, Samsung Mobile, Siemens Healthcare, TD Bank, and Wal-Mart Stores. Their backgrounds varied, with chief information officers, a chief data officer, a chief marketing officer, a chief risk officer, and a chief science officer all represented. We had seeded the discussion by asking each of them in advance about the burning issues they were facing.

Zimmerman Advertising announced that it has been selected by Dunkin’ Donuts for its national local store marketing (LSM) business. The agency will support more than 7,000 Dunkin’ Donuts locations by working with the brand’s powerful LSMNow platform to create a variety of materials to help drive franchisee profitability from coast-to-coast, including Dunkin’ Donuts’ future locations in California.

Congressman Dave Camp (R-MI), chair of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, released draft tax reform legislation which includes a provision that will, if enacted, severely impact the economy and lead to significant job loss. This provision, which would be phased-in for tax years beginning before 2018, would allow advertisers to deduct only 50 percent of all advertising expenses in the first year and amortize the remaining 50 percent over the next 10 years. Since the inception of the Tax Code in 1913, advertising has been treated as a fully tax deductible ordinary and necessary business expense.

The video landscape is in a time of major flux, with digital viewing on the rise, advertisers seeking integrated campaigns and yet TV networks still holding most of the cards. But with the emergence of new technologies—and new measurement capabilities—video advertising is poised for change. Last year, Nielsen and Simulmedia brought together a core group of researchers, marketers and C-suite executives from all sides of the media industry to discuss the future of video advertising.

Getting consistency right also requires the attention of top leadership. That’s because by using a variety of channels and triggering more and more interactions with companies as they seek to meet discrete needs, customers create clusters of interactions that make their individual interactions less important than their cumulative experience. This customer journey can span all elements of a company and include everything from buying a product to actually using it, having issues with a product that require resolution, or simply making the decision to use a service or product for the first time.

Everybody’s Phone Company, Inc. announced that its 2014 advertising and pre-paid home phone service packages will target the Hispanic market, which is Texas’ fastest growing demographic.

The overall verdict: The internet has been a plus for society and an especially good thing for individual users

The advertising industry is in a state of existential crisis, thanks to technology; analytics; migrating, fickle and/or distracted eyeballs; Netflix and other on-demand services; piracy; privacy; attribution; the decline of print as a medium; stagnating television audience numbers; and the fact that we can finally start to understand which 50% of our ad spend is wasted.

As a headline in today’s Wall Street Journaldeclares,“For Some Retailers, Success in Simply Staying Alive.” The lede does it even better: “For some of the country’s weakest retailers, less red is the new black.”

Adam Kasper, chief media officer at Havas, predicts that the content marketing business will grow, as content comes closer to media buying, and automation will have a huge impact on this growth.

New Accenture research reports that more than 89 percent of female professionals around the globe and a similar number of male respondents believe building their “career capital” – those differentiated skills that define and advance their careers – is key to success in the workplace. The research, based on a survey of 4,100 male and female professionals in 32 countries, also found that professionals welcome change and are confident of their ability to succeed in the workplace.

I’ve been in the media industry for over six years in New York and San Diego at various ad agencies, and one of my favorite parts of the job is my interaction with sales reps. It could be argued that we work in the best industry in the world, because we’re tasked with innovating, strategizing and socializing. The list below includes dos and don’ts for both media buyers and planners and sales reps, based on my own observations, heart-to-hearts with some of my favorite reps, and conversations with fellow media people. If we all follow these simple rules, we can minimize frustrations and have more time for happy hours.

By Gonzalo López Martí @LopezMartiMiami

We Latinos are great at fooling around with balls.
Fútbol, pelota, that kind of thing.
Music?
Don’t get us started.
We are also great at producing loud delusional semi-literate political leaders.
However, when it comes to science…

The local commercial broadcast television and radio industry contributes $1.24 trillion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 2.65 million jobs to the American economy annually, found a new study by Woods & Poole Economics with support from BIA/Kelsey. The analysis, which breaks down broadcasters’ influence on the economy of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, concluded that both television and local radio broadcasting’s economic impact will continue to grow in the coming years.

The National Retail Federation released its 2014 economic forecast today, projecting retail industry sales (which exclude automobiles, gas stations, and restaurants) will increase 4.1 percent*, up from the preliminary 3.7 percent growth seen in 2013. NRF also announced today it expects online sales in 2014 to grow between 9 and 12 percent.

Analysis of recent ACA numbers in California revealed a surprising statistic:  Hispanics and Millennials are signing up for the ACA Exchange at half the rate of Non-Hispanics. While initial assumptions pointed to the highly publicized challenges shared by most consumers during the initial enrollment period, deeper delving by Santiago Solutions Group (SSG) indicates that Hispanics and Millennials share a common problem which affected their low ACA enrollment levels: a Healthcare literacy gap. Growth leaders and insurers are turning their attention toward immediate action plans that can correct this common – and very fixable – problem.  By Santiago Solutions Group

The high demand from Hollywood executives for fresh faces and a cohesive Latino entertainment entity has prompted the recent partnership of Isabel Echeverry/Kontakto Reps and Erika Olmos/Olmos Management to form Olmos Kontakto Entertainment.