advertising

On the heels of announcing several new ad formats and allowing members to direct message brands, LinkedIn has announced a new generative AI option for ad creation that provides marketers with automated variations of ad copy and headlines. According to the company, LinkedIn’s AI-generated copy suggestions use advanced OpenAI GPT models to leverage data from marketers’ LinkedIn page and Campaign Manager settings — including ad objectives, targeting criteria and the desired target audience — to help guide the ad creation process.

With half of all media already AI-enabled to some degree, media currently is the primary use of AI on Madison Avenue, according to a research analysis presented recently to the board of directors of the American Association of Advertising Agencies by the equity research analysts at New Street Research.

Amazon is planning to launch an advertising-supported tier of its Prime Video streaming service as it looks to further build its ad business and generate more revenue from entertainment, according to people familiar with the situation. The discussions, which the people said are in the early stages and have been going on over the past several weeks, come in the wake of cost-cutting reviews across the company’s businesses, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs.

Spectrum Reach, Charter Communications’s ad-sales unit, said it will use Beachfront Media as its sell-side ad server. Working with Beachfront will enable Spectrum Reach to sell ads to programmatic buyers across traditional set-top box TV, connected TV and online video platforms.

Two of the program categories most immediately impacted by the Writers Guild of America strike registered advertising-revenue growth in the first quarter before the picket lines went up and production stopped. According to MediaRadar, ad spending on TV talk shows was $221.4 million in the first quarter, up 11% from a year ago. Spending on soap operas was $59.4 million in the first quarter, up 23%.

The television industry’s advertising business had a rough first quarter, prompting analyst Michael Nathanson to cut his forecast for the full year of 2023. The bright spot in the outlook is sports. The companies and networks that have strong sports-rights portfolios are doing better than those that don’t. That makes keeping sports perhaps more important than growing streaming revenue, which declined in the first quarter and is expected to grow a bit slower than expected in 2023.

In internal forecasts, the company projected that ad sales would keep declining, handing a tough challenge to its new chief executive.

Daytime may not be the new primetime, but at a time when linear viewing is shrinking, new research from iSpot.tv shows daytime programming growing and grabbing a bigger share of viewership. iSpot said that during the 2022-23 TV season, the advertising impressions generated by daytime programming grew 1.3% to 860.3 billion. By contrast, primetime ad impressions dropped 3%. Daytime programming’s share of all linear impressions hit 17.7%.

The best general manages put in the hard work of learning sales processes and understanding the details. Those willing to make that effort are always rewarded on the bottom line.

Citing “macroeconomic factors,” Dentsu this morning became the latest major agency holding company to revise its 2023 ad outlook downward. Dentsu now estimates global ad spending will rise 3.3%, down half a point from the 3.8% it projected in its last forecast in December 2022. Dentsu also reduced its U.S. at growth projection for the year down nearly a percentage point, to 2.6% from the 3.7% growth rate it predicted in its year-end 2022 forecast.

CBS, Cox and Fox have agreed to pay a total of $48 million to end claims in Illinois federal court that they participated in a scheme among major U.S. broadcasters to artificially inflate television advertising prices.

COO Tom Carter says one problem is “a couple of Japanese nameplates having trouble getting inventory on the lots for their dealers.” However, auto is still the company’s largest ad category.

For decades, the week in May when television executives revealed what new shows were coming and which old ones were going spoke to the power and influence that ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox had over popular culture. This past week offered more evidence of how that is diminishing, draped in confusion about the future wrought by the Hollywood writers strike.

As the start of the national TV upfront ad market draws near, total advertising — for live, linear TV — is estimated to drop 8% to $61.31 billion this year while total connected TV will rise 21% to $25.09 billion, according to eMarketer. YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix are among those that will see big gains, according to this analysis — with YouTube seeing the strongest rise. In terms of the upfront itself — where big brand advertisers typically commit 75% of their September- to-August TV season media before the season begins — eMarketer says YouTube will get “as much money as any TV network.”

CNN last Wednesday broadcast one of the most controversial news events of the year, a runaway town hall interview with former President Donald Trump, and advertisers like Subaru and Fidelity Investments went along for the ride. There are new questions about whether all of Madison Avenue will do so in the future.

Tucker Carlson is out at 8 p.m. on Fox News Channel, and the network hopes that a host of blue-chip advertisers that for years avoided his controversial hour will soon come back in. Since Carlson’s stunning exit last month, a timeslot that has been shunned by many Madison Avenue stalwarts seems as if it is being embraced. Procter & Gamble, one of the nation’s largest and most influential advertisers, has been running ads in Fox News Tonight, the network’s new 8 p.m. program, for female-skewing products like Venus razor blades by Gillette and Secret underarm deodorant. Also showing up in commercial breaks: Novo Nordisk’s trendy medication Ozempic, and Scotts Miracle-Gro.

Byron Allen’s company claims McDonald’s has failed to honor its promise to spend 5% of its advertising budget on Black-owned media.

PubMatic said it launched Activate, a new technology that enables buyers to access premium video and CTV inventory on Pubmatic’s programmatic platform via direct deals. Launch partners include Dentsu, GroupM, Havas, LG, Mars and Omnicom Media Group Germany.

Audience measurement firm Comscore has struck a deal with Magna, part of IPG Mediabrands, to use Comscore’s local television ratings to “inform” local TV buys across the organization. The companies said Comscore is the only alternative ratings service that will be used by Magna for local television. The firm also uses the Nielsen local ratings.

Gray is rolling out Waymark’s tech across all its stations, letting them create video ads in five minutes or less.

At Peacock’s NewFront presentation Tuesday, NBCUniversal rolled out new commercial formats aimed at giving sponsors more attention and a better opportunity to interact with viewers. One of the new formats enables an advertiser to be everywhere NBCU’s. Called Spotlight Plus, the advertiser’s message shows up no matter what a viewer is watching, like a cross-platform roadblock, whether it’s an original film on Peacock, a drama on a linear network or a content on a third-party digital platform.

Amazon said this season Thursday Night Football sponsors will be able to send different creative messages to different targeted audience groups within the same 30-second commercial position. For example, an automaker could send a sports car spot to younger viewers, an SUV ad to sports and outdoors enthusiasts, and a more general brand spot to the remaining viewers.

A report from DirecTV Advertising ahead of the upfronts suggested that even sponsors who are buying connected TV continue to lean into linear addressable advertising. The DirecTV report says that in 2022, 59% of CTV buyers also bought linear addressable advertising from multichannel video programming distributors and virtual MVPDs like Sling TV and YouTube TV.

Tucker Carlson has long been an inescapable presence in culture — the conservative news host’s show Tucker Carlson Tonight was a frequent chart-topper among the cable news group and clips from his Fox News broadcasts often trended on social media. But for advertisers, Carlson’s reach wasn’t necessarily a desirable one, and his surprise departure from the Fox News fold may be a positive sign for the network.

Bud Light may have fumbled its attempt to broaden its customer base by partnering with a transgender influencer. But experts say inclusive marketing is simply good business — and it’s here to stay.

Congress should avoid imposing “unreasonable barriers to effective and responsible uses of data,” the industry group Privacy for America said in a letter sent Tuesday to House members. “Data-driven advertising, supported in large part by data services companies, fosters a competitive marketplace where small and mid-size businesses, as well as self-employed individuals, of which many are minority-owned, can compete with the economy’s largest players,” the organization writes.

The veteran sales leader will oversee advertising inventory and revenue management strategy for ad sales.

WQAD Moline, Ill., came up with a TV advertising campaign that was unique to the needs of Matt Wangelin, owner of Wangelin’s Auto. “It really works well for my type of business.”

National TV advertising revenues will sink 4.4% this year — a steeper drop than forecast in a previous projection, says S&P Global Ratings. It estimates broadcast TV will sink 5.2% with cable TV networks losing 4%. Broadcast TV’s bigger decline comes from the lack of Olympics programming this year compared to 2022 Olympics advertising results, which pulled in $1.1 billion. The softer scatter market is a bigger factor.

Brian Wieser, a Madison Avenue and Wall Street analyst who has long been one of the staunchest defenders of television’s advertising primacy, is no longer so sure. In Wednesday’s edition of his Madison and Wall newsletter, the former GroupM business intelligence chief, acknowledged, “Now I see more downside risk than upside potential” for television as an advertising medium.