Digiday

Last month, Snap announced that it was working on generative AI ad tools, including AI-powered lenses (or augmented reality effects) and an AI copy generator to create ad headlines. TikTok launched its creative AI suite Symphony over the summer. At the same time, Pinterest launched Pinterest Ad Labs, a new program for select brands to test prototypes of new creative and ad tools, including generative AI features. Meanwhile, Meta expanded its generative AI ad tools in May, allowing advertisers to upload reference images to create AI-generated variations.

The Wall Street Journal is no longer the only Dow Jones property to come to life for its traveling event franchise, the Journal House. This week, hosted congruently with the Singapore Grand Prix taking place Sept. 18-19, the Journal House featured the WSJ’s B2B sibling brands for the first time, including OPIS and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance. And next week, both the consumer and B2B brands will pop-up again at the Journal House in New York City during the UN General Assembly’s Climate Week.

With less than two months to go before the most consequential presidential election in recent U.S. history, estimates of the advertising dollars being dropped into the race keep going up — as high as $12 billion, according to eMarketer. There’s no doubt that television, in particular local TV, will benefit greatly from this bounty of election-related spend, presidential, downstate, PAC money and issue-oriented. Magna, in an update on 2024 projected ad spend it released earlier this week, predicted that ad spend on local television will surge 25% this year, mostly the result of political ad dollars. But what about other media?

For nearly two decades, ad execs have watched Google tighten its grip on ad dollars, moving from frustration to horror, and finally, to resigned apathy. It wasn’t just that Google was cutting them out — it was that Google was winning, untouchable and unchallenged. Every accusation, from anti-competitive data practices to squeezing publishers with hefty fees, became grudgingly accepted as the cost of doing business. But now, as behind-the-scenes revelations expose how Google’s execs orchestrated their dominance, that resignation has turned into something far tastier: schadenfreude.

So far, 2024 is looking pretty good — especially compared to last year — but that doesn’t it hasn’t been without challenges. Referral traffic from search and social platforms is still lackluster; generative AI technology is still transforming the media industry (despite whether publishers want it); and Google’s decision to walk back its third-party cookie deprecation plans came as quite the shock after five years of preparation. All that and much more will be discussed during the Digiday Publishing Summit next week, Sept. 23-25, in Key Biscayne, Fla. And in between catching rays and catching up, publishing execs from Axios, Bloomberg, Disney, Hearst, Time and many more will take the stage to unveil their strategies for facing the biggest threats and opportunities in the digital media industry right now. Next week there will be more in-depth recaps of what was said during those on-stage discussions, as well as an overheard from the summit in our next Media Briefing. But for now, here’s a look at some of the topics that will be discussed at this fall’s DPS.

As if it’s not already the dominant agency holding company, Publicis just announced an acquisition that strengthens its commerce abilities, by purchasing Mars United Commerce for an undisclosed sum. Formerly the Mars Agency, Mars United Commerce (MUC) is an independent commerce marketing company that helps guide marketers on how to best reach consumers in online and offline shopper ecosystems. With more than 1,000 employees in 14 “hubs” across the world, there are various estimates of the firm’s annual revenue — somewhere between $75 million and $185 million.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s efforts to bring Google to heel at trial for the second time this year are well underway in a Virginia courtroom where its $307 billion-per-year ad empire faces a potential breakup. The trial sheds light on the intricate workings of Google’s ad-tech dominance and the industry’s competitive dynamics, with some of its more esoteric offerings, such as its ad server and ad exchange, a.k.a. ‘DFP’ and ‘AdX, et al. debated extensively (see right). In disclosures contained in more than 1,800 trial exhibits plus the testimonies of more than 25 witnesses over seven days entered by the DOJ, the complexity and implications of Google’s dominance of the digital advertising ecosystem slowly comes into view. Below are some of the key numbers revealed in the trial so far.

With more than 200 retail media networks (and counting) and finite media dollars, agency executives say a retail media reckoning may be on the horizon. Retail media networks (RMNs) have been touted as the industry’s latest silver bullet. But given that glut of competition, agency execs say they’re advising clients to be more calculated with their RMN spend. In conjunction, retailers are asking for more ad dollars, gobbling up advertiser’s trade/shopper marketing budgets and turning their attention to budgets dedicated to national brand marketing efforts to ultimately make more money. Retailers hope off-site ad opportunities will reposition them from performance marketing channels to one-stop-ad shops.

Unlike a CEO or CFO, the role of a CMO isn’t always essential — especially in the eyes of some Fortune 500 companies. In fact, only about two-thirds (63%) of them have a CMO, according to Forrester. In other words, for many big businesses, CMOs are a luxury they can often do without. And even when marketing does have a seat at the boardroom table, it’s not always the CMO who’s at it.

Although the Web3 gaming space is smaller than it once was following the cold of last year’s crypto winter, millions of users still play blockchain games on a regular basis, making the Web3 community a potential gold mine for advertising looking to reach a young, technologically literate audience. Thus far, however, all of the advertisers who have participated in Pixels’ in-game ad test are other blockchain game publishers or cryptocurrency companies — which makes sense, given the game’s crypto-native audience. However, the game’s publisher believes that the opportunity to advertise to a Web3 audience could eventually be attractive to brands in other sectors, such as gambling.