| | Media Buyer & Planner Today | | | | | | | | | #1 Sprint Launches In-House Agency | | The telecom giant is starting an in-house agency that will include its own production operation – YellowFan Studios – which it opened last year. The agency, yet to be named, will do both ad creative and also digital ad buying. However, Sprint will continue to work with Droga5 for strategy and Horizon Media for ad buying on TV and other platforms. Rob Roy, chief digital officer at Sprint, told Business Insider that starting its own agency will allow the company to control its own data. He added that bringing programmatic and digital display buying in-house is not just a cost-cutting measure by saving on agency fees, but will allow the company to better deal with digital ad fraud. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Sprint is joining a growing number of brands including Allstate, Unilever, StubHub and Netflix in starting their own in-house agencies. The move for Sprint comes as the company has significantly reduced its marketing budget. According to Kantar Media, Sprint was spending $1.2 billion on advertising a decade ago, while, according to an Adweek report, it is looking to spend around $600 million this year. | Two Takes: Business Insider | Adweek
| | | | #2 Target Rolls Out Private Label Campaign | | The retail chain is currently in the process of producing a dozen new private label brands that it has begun rolling out in its stores nationwide. Among them is its new womenswear label A New Day, which premiered last month, along with a menswear collection Goodfellow & Co. In conjunction with these rollouts, Target is airing a new brand marketing campaign with the tagline "More in Store." Ad Age reports that the new campaign, created by agency Mother and specialty units Target Creative and Team Arrow, will include print, digital, TV, including Spanish-language spots, and visual merchandising in stores for each new brand. Target will also host in-store events through September. The campaign will target multiple age groups. Target CMO Rick Gomez says he anticipates the campaign to result in more than 1.5 billion paid media impressions. "This is our second biggest investment behind holiday," he says. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Brick-and-mortar store retailers continue to face heavy competition from e-commerce retailers like Amazon, and are seeking ways to revitalize customer interest in shopping in their stores. Last year Target's sales fell 6% to $89.5 billion. With younger millennial shoppers less interested in traditional brand named products, Target is hoping to draw them in with its own, new private label brands. | A Take: Ad Age
| | | | #3 Facebook's Self-Service Ad Tool Aided Russian Trolls | | The Russian "troll farm" that spent $100,000 on Facebook ads between June 2015 and May 2017 to influence U.S. politics didn't need to go through an ad agency, just using Facebook's self-service ad buying tool, an anonymous ad buyer tells Digiday. All a small budget an ad buyer would need is a credit card and could bypass a Facebook sales rep. Facebook would not comment on that claim. Brendan Gahan, founder of ad agency Epic Signal, says a troll farm could quickly submit hundreds of different ad creatives that vary slightly from each other. And could test which messages got through the Facebook criteria detectors before finding a "sweet spot." Political operatives could also hide identities by masking their IP addresses with virtual private networks, according to independent marketing tech adviser Nate Elliott. Using VPNs could make it appear like the computers purchasing inventory to display divisive ads are scattered across many locations and not working together, when in reality they are. The $100,000 was spent by 470 different accounts over a two-year period. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: This is potentially a major problem for Facebook, because developing stricter policies would restrict the amount of advertising the platform could take in from legitimate small advertisers. As Digiday reports, the ease of setting up an account allows Facebook to attract ad dollars from not just big brands but also mom-and-pop shops, and the lower barrier to entry in setting up campaigns is one of the reasons Facebook has been able to keep growing its $10 billion per quarter ad business. | | A Take: Digiday | |
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| | 77 | | Percentage of U.S. teens, ages 12-17, who access YouTube daily, according to Forrester Research. Next most popular social media platform among teens is Facebook, accessed by 55% daily, followed by Instagram (52%), Snapchat (51%), Twitter (34%) and Pinterest (19%). | – Reported by eMarketer
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| | NBC Wins With NFL Opener | by Michael Malone
NBC was the big winner thanks to the NFL opener, which saw the Chiefs come from behind to off the Patriots. NBC had a 6.7 rating in viewers 18-49, and a 25 share. Last year's opener scored an 8/28. Second was CBS at 1.1/4. Football Night in America led into the game on NBC, and scored a 5.7. CBS had repeated comedies, then Big Brother up 20% at 1.8 and drama Zoo up 25% at 0.5. Fox was at 0.7.3, as Beat Shazam scored a flat 0.8 and Love Connection a 0.6. Love Connection did a 1.3 the week before. Telemundo too was at 0.7/3. El Senor de los Cielos scored a 0.9. ABC rated a 0.6/2. Battle of the Network Stars was up a tenth of a point at 0.6, and the Gong Show finale was down a tenth of a point at 0.5. Univision did a 0.6/2 as well. The CW was at 0.3/1. Penn & Teller: Fool Us was a 0.4 and Whose Line Is It Anyway? a 0.3. The previous week's shows did a 0.6 and 0.7, respectively. | |
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| • ADAM GERBER was named to the newly created position of senior VP, investment, North America at WPP and GroupM media agency Essence. He will report both to Essence global CEO Christian Juhl and GroupM president of investment Lyle Schwartz. Gerber was previously senior VP of client development and communications at ABC and prior to that was VP of ad products and strategy at Brightcove and CMO at Quantcast. However, he also has a media agency background, having worked at MediaVest as senior VP, director of innovation and strategy and as a senior VP at Media Edge:cia, both GroupM and WPP agencies.
• JENNY AWASANO was promoted to senior VP, group creative director at DigitasLBi, where she will oversee the American Express consumer account, among other duties. She's been with the agency for close to 10 years and was most recently VP, group creative director. | |
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| News Technology Summit
September 26-27, 2017 | Atlanta Airport Marriott, GA
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October 16-17, 2017 | The Stewart Hotel, NYC
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NYC Television Week
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Hispanic Television Summit
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