Agency

Personalization is teetering on the edge of the buzzword precipice. But companies that can figure out what it really means and how to take advantage of it are already outstripping their competition.

I recently went to the grocery store with my 7-year-old daughter for our weekly grocery shopping. I am trying to get her to become more autonomous and independent, so we had two shopping lists—a smaller one for her and the longer one for me. In terms of selection, I granted her the liberty to choose whatever product/brand she likes as long as she stuck to the list.  By Smruti Kulkarni Shanbhag, Nielsen Design Solutions – Europe Lead

Is it true that the majority of the growth in the U.S. Hispanic market is coming from markets that are below the top 10 Hispanic DMAs? “Generally speaking, yes,” reveals Fernando E. Férnandez, Partner and Chief Client Officer at New York-based multicultural advertising agency d’expósito & Partners. But, are media buyers and marketers responding? In this Hispanic Radio Podcast, we look at the locales where your company could thrive.

Connected TV households now make up nearly three-quarters of all US households, but those penetration levels don’t necessarily add up to a huge advertising market—yet.

As health and wellness becomes one of the greatest concerns for nearly all segments of the population, MedicosTV has launched a multifaceted delivery platform for a new channel providing relevant health-related programming aimed at Spanish-speaking Hispanic audiences everywhere.

When The Hershey Company brand Reese’s Pieces was featured in the 1982 hit film E.T., sending sales soaring, the use of product placement in movies and TV shifted into high gear. Who could forget the association of Aston Martin with James Bond, or Nike with Forrest Gump?

In his latest blog post, Byron Sharp has some pretty strong words to say about brand tracking. As usual, there is lots in his post that is true and important to say, but not that much that is as new or challenging as the headline suggests.  by Josh Samuel

As the back-to-school shopping season heats up, a new report from Morning Consult finds a majority of parents plan on spending at least $200 on their child’s back-to-school shopping.

Millennials have been the focus of advertisers, retailers and media for over a decade, but as influential as this group has been, meeting millennials’ expectations has proven difficult.  

One of the most significant ad industry events of 2018 to date has been Martin Sorrell’s departure from WPP. That has opened up discussions about what it means for the future of big holding companies and agency models going forward. Not only is there a trend towards “unbundling” agencies from behemoth holding companies, but “the agency model of the future” is a topic of constant speculation. With declining revenues, shrinking margins, and unprecedented competition, it seems a given that the agency holding company model is no longer tenable as-is, and the traditional agency model may not be either.  By Mark Duval / Duval Partnership

AdsWizz announced that Univision Communications Inc. (UCI) has partnered with AdsWizz AudioMax platform to power programmatic ad buying for Uforia, its radio and music streaming app for Latinos.

I was going to write about the Facebook/Google duopoly, but I got sidetracked by this question: If Google and Facebook are a duopoly, what is the market they are controlling?  by Gord Hotchkiss

In marketing, it’s important to keep pace with demographic change. Even better to stay ahead. Right now, for instance, significant changes in the U.S. cultural landscape have made multicultural marketing imperative.  By Mario X. Carrasco is Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow Research

In a previous post I mentioned that there were some disturbing trends lurking in WARC’s analysis of campaign trends from this year’s Cannes Lions. To my mind those trends say a lot about the sorry state of marketing practice today.  by Nigel Hollis

You’d think that by the time you make it to the “C-suite” — which, for me, happened just a few weeks ago — that you’d have everything figured out.  Not necessarily. No matter how much one has grown in her or his career, there is always so much more to learn.  At the recent She Runs It Annual Multicultural Alliance Bootcamp, where I had the honor of joining a panel called “Journey to the C-Suite,” learn is exactly what I did.  By Helen Lin

Small, independent teams are the lifeblood of the agile organization. Top executives can unleash them by driving ambition, removing red tape, and helping managers adjust to the new norms.  By Oliver Bossert, Alena Kretzberg, and Jürgen Laartz

Augmented reality (AR) adds visual overlays on the physical world and is usually viewed through a smartphone. Virtual reality (VR) depicts a self-contained, navigable 3D world and is usually experienced through a specialized motion-detecting headset, says Barry Levine on July 24. Just as marketers have learned when a project should employ a website and when it should utilize an app, so they are beginning to understand when to choose AR or VR.

Determining audience “identity” has become a major priority over the past year for U.S. marketers, many of whom plan to increase their investment in finding and developing identity solutions.

Rising internet penetration, denser urban locations, faster paced lifestyles and challenging working hours are adding more and more layers of complexity to consumers’ lives. According to the World Health Organization, “workplace stress is the health epidemic of the 21st century,” and multiple agencies have tracked the steady rise of anxiety related illnesses around the world. Consumers are feeling more stretched than ever before, and are increasingly striving for convenient solutions which help to simplify their busy lives.

New American Community Survey questions revised in 2016 show a stunning increase in reported mobile broadband usage – strong evidence that previous questions were not adequately capturing how U.S. households access the Internet.