advertising

Japanese advertising and PR firm Dentsu confirmed today that it was indicted for violating Japan’s Antimonopoly Act in connection with bid rigging activities that took place during the leadup to the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Other companies were also charged including Hakuhodo, Tokyu Agency, Fuji Creative, Cerespo and Same Two.

The U.S. advertising marketplace fell for the seventh consecutive month in January, declining 5.8% from January 2022, according to the latest update from the U.S. Ad Market Tracker. The decline reflects an extra tough comparison with January 2022, which was up 23.1% over January 2021, which was the lowest January since SMI began the index.

In another indicator of the impact that weakening economics has had on the ad industry, payments to the media have grown increasingly late over the past two years, according to new data released by online ad-revenue exchange OAREX.

Ad industry groups are urging the Federal Trade Commission to reject a law professor’s request to regulate online programmatic advertising in ways that could restrict companies’ ability to serve ads to people based on their activity across sites.

Night Court, the NBC sitcom that was recently rebooted, enjoyed its heyday after its debut on NBC’s Thursday primetime schedule in 1984. But NBCUniversal is hoping the retooled comedy will lead Madison Avenue into the future. When the original program launched, built around star Harry Anderson as a non-traditional metropolitan judge, NBC sold ads against the debut broadcast of each episode as well as a rerun later in the season. Now, says Mark Marshall, the executive recently given wider oversight over NBCUniversal’s national ad sales, the company is selling broad-reach ads attached to the linear debut of each episode as well as targeted advertising that appears adjacent to the series when it streams on Peacock.

More light was shed on the sell-side push to create a so-called “JIC” that would certify multiple new advertising currencies used to buy and sell TV and premium video advertising. Speaking at the Association of National Advertisers’ media conference on Feb. 17, Group Executive Vice President Bill Tucker described it as something that would have a “different operational structure than international JICs,” which normally stands for “joint industry committee,” and then asked Video Advertising Bureau EVP Danielle DeLauro to explain what it actually is and how it differentiates from the Cross-Media Measurement platform being developed by the ANA with input from the VAB and others.

The slump in the advertising market didn’t stop Warner Bros. Discovery from selling out its inventory across the NBA’s All-Star Weekend. “We’re sold out,” Jon Diament, executive VP for ad sales at WBD, said. “This is the best year we’ve ever had.” Diament said that in addition to official league sponsors — big names long associated with the NBA like Kia, State Farm and AT&T, this year’s All-Star weekend has 20 new advertisers in the lineup.

In an advertising market update released this morning, media auditing firm Cortex Media projects the 2023 advertising marketplace likely will experience a “slowcession,” a term it made up characterizing the economy as “coming to a standstill, but never going in reverse.” In terms of media-buying implications, it is projecting the 2023-24 upfront advertising marketplace will be most impacted, declining 7% to 8% over 2022-23 volume.

AMC Networks advertising executive Evan Adlman has been chosen to oversee the company’s digital and national sales team under a new reorganization of its commercial revenue business. Adlman, who has been AMC’s senior vice president of advanced advertising and digital partnerships, will become executive vice president of commercial sales and revenue operations.

Ad-ID, a joint venture of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, today named Nada Bradbury CEO. She had been global head of partnerships at Nielsen, where she’d spent 25 years. In her new post, she’ll report to ANA CEO Bob Lioice and 4As CEO MArla Kaplowitz. The position was last held by Harold Geller.

The good news for U.S. and worldwide advertisers is that the rate of advertising cost inflation is projected to decelerate this year, falling below the overall increase in consumer price inflation. In the U.S., the overall rate of ad-cost inflation will decline 1.7 points this year to 4.2% from 5.9% in 2022, according to new estimates released by ECI Media Management.

All the buzz about Netflix getting into the ad business prompted the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), which represents the local broadcast industry, to push back on behalf of traditional, linear TV. A recent report indicated that Netflix was telling advertisers that its Basic With Ads tier now has about 600,000 monthly active users. “Importantly, this metric refers to subscribers, not viewers and Netflix ad-supported users pale in comparison to local linear TV viewing audiences,” TVB CEO Steve Lanzano said. “The comparison is extremely meaningful for the advertising community and brands.”

Fox gave its ad supported streaming service Tubi a big push on TV’s biggest stage Sunday with two brand spots during the Super Bowl. The spots showed giant bunnies tossing people down a rabbit hole, a metaphor intended to show viewers the depth of content available on Tubi. Fox Sports also ran a promo for Tubi that made it appear as if viewers were moving from the Fox game announcers to the Tubi home screen to watch a movie.

For the first time in decades, Anheuser-Busch won’t be the only alcohol brand running national ads during the game.

Big name advertisers from Netflix to Google are paying as much as $7 million for a 30-second spot during the big game on Sunday, in order to capture the attention of the roughly 100 million viewers who tune in each year.R

Projections for ’23 suggest an $18 billion-plus sports advertising business with potential growth of 15%-20% as the business remains a bulwark against streaming’s fragmented sports landscape.

Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, Dan Aykroyd and a bevy of other notables are set to appear in a promo for Fox Nation, suggesting that the subscription-based streaming service is one of the more important business initiatives for Fox Corp., the parent company of the Fox broadcast network, which will televise Super Bowl this Sunday, and Fox News Media, which operates the broadband outlet.

Fox said Monday that in-game ads for Super Bowl LVII have all been sold. Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, said a few ads went for more than $7 million for a 30-second spot. Most sold between $6 million and $7 million. Above, large advertisements adorn buildings and electronic billboards leading up to the 2023 NFL Super Bowl in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

A local advertiser on KOSA in Odessa-Midland, Texas, was so impressed with the digital advertising campaign done for his business by the station that he went on camera to let others know that he wanted “to invest more in that type of advertising.”

During a pre-upfront period when networks are looking to separate themselves from the competition, NBCUniversal has invited its rivals to speak at its annual tech and data presentation in order to promote the Joint Industry Committee formed by programmers to create modern standards and a certification process for audience measurement.

TelevisaUnivision said it is moving its upfront event to a bigger venue in 2023 based on a big turnout last year. “We’ve reached the tipping point. The cultural firepower of U.S. Hispanics is indisputable, and more brands than ever are making the commitment to invest in this audience,” said Donna Speciale, TelevisaUnivision president of U.S., advertising sales and marketing.

In an uncharacteristic breaking of the U.S. advertising trade association ranks, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) issued a joint statement blasting remarks made last week by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) CEO David Cohen characterizing Washington lawmakers as “extremists” hellbent on destroying the ad industry.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit announced a reorganization of its ad sales unit under Linda Yaccarino, chairman of global advertising sales and partnerships. One big change puts ad sales president Mark Marshall in charge of converged teams responsible for selling the company’s linear, digital and streaming inventory. Marshall will also oversee a new unit looking to sell ads to small and midsized businesses.  The SMB unit will work closely with NBCU’s local sales division.

Disney says it has signed up 12 sponsors for the two-day event. Sponsoring the All-Star game are presenting sponsor Honda, Discovery, Enterprise, Goodyear, Lexus, Navy Federal Credit Union and SAP.

Although December’s national linear TV ad spending improved compared to previous months, it still declined 2%, according to Standard Media Index — to roughly $3.7 billion. Looking at the entire fourth quarter, the national TV marketplace was down 6% — an improvement from the 16% decline of the third quarter. For the calendar year 2022, national TV ad spend was down 5% versus the 2021 year — and 14% lower than 2019.

Without political advertising and with, possibly, a recession on the horizon, station groups rely on their customer-focused approach to drive cross-platform businesses with omnichannel, client-focused campaigns. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

Brian Wieser is exiting as global president-business intelligence of WPP’s GroupM unit. Wieser, who announced late last year that he was turning over day-to-day operations of GroupM’s forecasting and business intelligence to successor Kate Scott-Dawkins, has not disclosed what he plans to do next, but at least part of it will continue being co-host with Scott-Dawkins on their weekly This Week Next Week podcast.

The 2022 U.S. ad market expanded a little more than 3% over 2021, according to a MediaPost analysis of 12 months of data from Standard Media Index’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker. The analysis — a simple, unweighted average of monthly year-over-year percent changes during 2022 — does not account for actual monthly ad-volume differences, and precedes an explicit annual analysis expected to be released by SMI soon.

Disney’s prowess as an entertainment powerhouse is undisputed. Aaron LaBerge, chief technology officer of the Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution (DMED) division, argues that the company also has also built an industry-leading competency in ad tech. Over the last several years, LaBerge’s team has created its own advertising-delivery stack from the ground up, centered on the proprietary Disney Ad Server. The company deployed the new Disney Ad Server on Hulu last year — and it’s now also powering Disney+ with ads, which launched last month. Currently, the Disney Ad Server delivers some 500 million ad impressions per day.

A group of House Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Thursday to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that eliminated restrictions on corporate campaign spending. The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United v. FEC case prohibited the government from restricting political campaign spending by companies, nonprofit organizations and unions. This amendment, if passed, would allow Congress and state governments to enact “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral” limitations on campaign funding, including restricting corporations from spending “unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.”

For a second straight year, YouTube will host its annual Brandcast pitch to video ad buyers during the heart of what had been a week dominated by traditional TV network upfronts in New York. The digital video giant, which had been an anchor tenant of the more digitally focused NewFronts ad showcase held earlier in the spring, made its mid-May debut last year with a show in the Broadway theater district. This year, on May 17, Brandcast is heading uptown to Lincoln Center’s recently renovated David Geffen Hall. The evening show will be followed by an after-party, YouTube said in a blog post.

To upfront or not upfront, that is the question. AMC Networks will choose the former, holding an in-person event with between 200 to 250 attendees at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Tuesday, April 18. The company opts for the approach after at least one of the nation’s biggest media companies has opted to abandon the concept, and a sector upstart has unveiled an effort to take its place.

Broadcasters can learn from the best practices of digital advertising, which has been agile, responsive and innovative in the face of disruption since the pandemic. Here are some practices to adopt.