Everything In Its Right Place When we started this newsletter at the height of the first wave of the pandemic, I didn’t think I would still be writing them in Q4. At the time, it seemed unlikely that this would last longer than a couple of months. However, their purpose then, and now, is the ...continue reading
Prime, Election Season From any vantage point, October has a lot going on. This is especially true when talking Ad Spend. That is not a value statement; it’s just an objective fact. The run-up to the US presidential election, Amazon Prime Day, and the start of Q4 will be a force multiplier. It is going ...continue reading
September to Remember If you only cared about Digital Ad Spend, and not (gesturing broadly at everything) anything else, well, this has been an amazing end to the summer and Q3. At this point, Ad Spend is outperforming our expectations. In my last newsletter, we talked about getting past flat. Well, we got past it ...continue reading
Getting Past Flat We took a longer than normal break between newsletters. With the summer quickly coming to an end and folks away on holiday, it felt like a good time to step away from industry analysis. I thought by virtue of living in some kind of time soup this summer would feel longer than ...continue reading
Success Stories: How FitBit Achieved Higher Return on Ad Spend via People-Based Marketing To prepare for an internet without third-party cookies, more brands are turning to people-based marketing to reach their high-value audiences while still being able to effectively measure outcomes. Leading health and fitness technology brand Fitbit did just that, leveraging LiveRamp®’s integration with ...continue reading
The Blue Jean Committee By design, this newsletter is positive. With so much uncertainty and challenging circumstances, I think it’s important to focus on the good out there. And while there is plenty of it, there is a limit to my positivity. And its video conferencing. It is an energy vampire. I don’t care if you ...continue reading
This is Today. Today is Yesterday. And Tomorrow is also Today. It’s official. Our new normal is no longer new. It’s just normal. If you have an internet connection, or cable television, you have heard those words more in the past few months than your own name. “The New Normal” will be the Time Magazine ...continue reading
Keep on Keeping On Momentum is important. You don’t realise how important it is until you lose it. In this business, we like to talk about momentum using expressions like “tailwinds”, “flywheel effects”, and the crown jewel of them all – “growth”. In a world where flat felt like progress, forward movement feels like a ...continue reading
Al Fresco Nation For the past couple of years, my running has been on a slow and steady decline. I can blame it on travel, work, and any number of distractions, but the truth is I just wasn’t able to keep a consistent routine. There wasn’t really anything materially different other than my motivation had ...continue reading
Viva Las Vegas? It’s the beginning of June, and Ad Spend continues to recover. Even the most hard-hit Ad categories, like Travel, have started to gain momentum. All verticals are up since April 1st, and green shoots are sprouting across the ecosystem. We still have a ways to go, but collectively things are getting better. ...continue reading
The world of digital advertising is largely siloed. Though brands, publishers, agencies, and tech providers are all connected symbiotically, they also operate independently. The same is true of various regions – players in APAC (Asia-Pacific) operate separately and behave differently than those in the UK, and vice-versa. In order to build a truly global strategy, ...continue reading
Ad tech companies frequently pivot whenever a business model doesn’t work out. And sometimes, this really pays off. Moat became an ad measurement juggernaut after it scrapped its crowdsourced marketplace meant to connect ad creators with brands, while Index Exchange became a popular header bidding vendor after it pivoted away from being an ad network.