| | Media Buyer & Planner Today | | | | | | | | | #1 Fox Plans Sunday Night Primetime Ad Reduction | | The broadcast network wants to eventually reduce TV ad time to two minutes per hour by 2020, down from the current average of about 13 minutes per hour, but more immediately, Fox plans call for reducing commercial time in its Sunday night programs. Each show will include only two commercials per break. Broadcasting & Cable reports that the two-spot pods will be sold in this upfront and begin airing during the start of the new season in fourth quarter. Fox is calling the new pods Jazz, which means just the "a" or first position and the "z" or last position, according to Bruce Lefkowitz, executive VP of ad sales at Fox Networks Group. The Jazz spots will be offered at a fixed price that would presumably be higher than what Sunday night spots cost this season. The network does not plan to make its shows longer to compensate for the reduced ad load. Instead it will create "Fox Blocks" that will contain branded content from advertisers. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Fox's decision follows an announcement by NBCUniversal last month that it plans to cut the ad load in original primetime shows by 10%. Fox's Lefkowitz says, "We want to improve the consumer experience and crate a better environment for our advertisers' messaging." Shorter commercial pods lessen the chance of viewers switching channels during the commercials. Fox's move, however, could create headaches for its advertisers. Cutting Sunday commercial pod ad loads and also adding Thursday Night Football telecasts in fourth quarter will significantly reduce the amount of ad time advertisers who want to reach entertainment-watching consumers get to buy. That, in turn, will increase pricing. | | Two Takes: B&C | WSJ | | | | #2 Publicis Agencies Win Marriott Global Media Account | | After six years working with WPP and GroupM agency MEC, Marriott has hired Publicis Groupe's Spark Foundry and SapientRazorfish to handle its global media planning and buying. MEC was recently merged with another WPP media agency Maxus to form a new agency Wavemaker. Publicis will create a dedicated agency called Marriott One Media to work with Marriott's internal media team, according to reports in Ad Age and Adweek. Rob Silver will be the global client leader for Marriott One Media. Spark specializes more in traditional media, while SapientRazorfish specializes in digital. Karin Timpone, global marketing officer at Marriott International, said, "This is a rare opportunity to reimagine our marketing practices in the digital age." | | WHY THIS MATTERS: Marriott, which has 30 brands and 6,500 hotels in 127 countries, is a sizable advertiser, spending more than $150 million in the U.S. and more than $200 million globally. The loss of the media account is another body blow to WPP which recently reported softer than expected revenue numbers for 2017. And on Monday it was announced that Kimberly-Clark has put its six-figure media spending account up for review. Incumbent on that account is WPP and GroupM's Mindshare. Although another WPP and GroupM media agency MediaCom just won the Hotels.com $175 million North America media account. | | Two Takes: Ad Age | Adweek | | | | #3 McDonalds Plans Fresh Beef Marketing Campaign | | The fast food chain plans to have fresh, not frozen, beef for its quarter-pound burgers throughout all of its U.S. locations by May. And as Ad Age reports, McDonald's is planning a major marketing campaign to let consumers know about it. While the chain has not offered specifics about how it will use media, McDonald's USA president Chris Kempczinski says, "We will go big against the rollout of this. McDonald's dedicated agency We Are Unlimited will handle the advertising and Golin Harris will do the public relations. | | WHY THIS MATTERS: McDonald's is actually late in its move to using fresh beef. Smaller competitors like Wendy's and even Shake Shack have been promoting the use of fresh beef for a while. Those competitors are trying to get out in front of the McDonald's introduction with ad campaigns of their own. While McDonald's in the short-term should see a bump in hamburger sales, the industry will be watching to see if it has a long-term impact on the overall revenue pecking order. | | A Take: Ad Age | |
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| | 51 | | Percentage of the top 5,000 websites worldwide as of Feb. 26, 2018 that have implemented ads.text, the Interactive Advertising Bureau Tech Labs text file on publishers' sites that lists all the vendors that are authorized to sell their inventory, according to data from Pixalate. That's up from 8.5% on September 18, 2017. | – Reported by eMarketer
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| | ABC Wins With Boisterous 'Bachelor' Finale | by Michael Malone
ABC took top honors among broadcast networks in Monday's prime ratings, scoring a 2.2 in viewers 18-49, per the Nielsen overnights, and an 8 share on a strong The Bachelor finale.
That just got past the 2.1/8 that NBC posted.
ABC had The Bachelor finale stretching across prime, up 22% from last week at 2.2.
NBC saw The Voice down 14% from its season premiere at 2.4. Drama Good Girls was off 13% from its series opener for a 1.3.
CBS and Fox were both at 0.8/3.
CBS had Kevin Can Wait up 10% at 1.1 and Man With a Plan at a flat 1.0, then Superior Donuts off 11% for a 0.8 and Living Biblically at 0.7, down a tenth of a point from its series premiere. Drama Scorpion closed out prime for CBS at a flat 0.8.
On Fox, Lucifer was off a tenth of a point at a 0.7 and The Resident up a tenth of a point at 0.9.
Telemundo did a 0.5/2, as did Univision.
The CW scored a 0.3/1. DC's Legends of Tomorrow rated a flat 0.4 and iZombie was down 33% from its season premiere at 0.2. | |
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| • AMY KEAN was appointed global head of strategic innovation at Starcom. She was most recently VP, strategic planning at Coti's in-house digital agency Beamly. Prior to that, she was regional strategy and insights lead at Mindshare and also served as head of innovation at Havas Media Lab in the U.K.
• DEBORAH WAHL has joined General Motors' Cadillac as global chief marketing officer. She replaces Uwe Ellinghaus who left the company in late December. Wahl served as McDonald's U.S. chief marketing officer from 2014 until early 2017. Prior to McDonald's she spend five years as CMO of Pulte Group, and before that was CMO at Chrysler. Since leaving McDonald's, she has served on the boards of Groupon and Mediaocean.
• JIMMY PITARO was named president of ESPN and co-chair, Disney Media Networks. He was most recently chairman of Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media since 2016. He reports directly to Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, which owns ESPN. Pitaro, 48, succeeds John Skipper who resigned in December. Prior to joining Disney, Pitaro was VP and head of Yahoo Media, where he oversaw all of the company's media properties, including Yahoo Sports. He also served as VP of business affairs for Launch Media and also worked for several law firms • JOHN ARIANAS was appointed VP, social impact partnerships at CBS Corp. He reports to Jo Ann Ross, president and chief advertising revenue officer. One of his roles at CBS will be to expand innovative advertising offerings in the social impact space. He was most recently executive VP of advertising & brand solutions at independent media network Pivot. Prior to that, Arianas was senior VP of advertising sales at Current TV, and he also spent 13 years at Viacom, working in sales at Comedy Central and MTV.
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