... actually improved by the current trends in media.

Mr. Corty's take on the situation helped make him the WSJ's top-rated analyst in the advertising and publishing sectors this year. He was also one of the top three media stock pickers. 

Says he: ""Going back five years, there was a feeling that these agencies might get disintermediated by Google or clients placing ads directly online".

"But actually, it turns out that these agencies are more important than ever to their clients, as agencies are crucial in sorting through the increasing complexities of reaching consumers in a digital age."

Corty, who specialises in following media and advertising companies, applies lessons learned from previous roles at Morningstar, including overseeing coverage of media and internet stocks.

He joined Morningstar in 2004 and became team leader for media and internet coverage in 2007. He believes this gives him an advantage in a world where media and technology are converging.

Read the original unabridged WSJ article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... challenges brands to grow earnings through improved marketing effectiveness and increased spending efficiencies to cut costs.”

Continued Mr Liodice: “Companies expect technology, expanding media platforms and better decision making to better enable marketers to pursue earnings growth objectives.” 

The survey found that marketers are continuing to challenge their agencies to lower costs. However, only 15% plan to cut agency compensation - a significant decrease from 2009 when 56% of marketers squeezed their agencies in this way.

Perhaps more significantly, the research also reveals that from 2013 onward marketers will focus on other means to lower costs and expenditures, including reductions on:

• Travel (58%)
   
• Internal agency expenses (55%)
   
• Advertising campaign media budgets (46%)
   
• New projects (44%)

The survey marks the seventh occasion on which the ANA has polled its members on the marketing industry's post-recession fiscal focus. The study was executed online in January 2013. Respondents included 120 client-side marketers.

Read the original unabridged ANA article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... creative and media agencies to mobile and analytics firms.

It's a move that could empty the wallets of agency evaluation consultancies. 

In some respects the new service is analagous with consumer-oriented Yelp Inc, a local directory service with social networking and user reviews. 

According to CMO Club founder and president Peter Krainik, he often witnessed chief marketers swapping recommendations informally at the club's dinners and events. "This is us helping people behind closed doors," said Krainik of the new program.

"We're connecting people, that's what the club is all about."

Since the inception of the program at the start of 2013, between five and ten CMOs per month have added recommendations. Mr. Krainik says the listings are growing, with multiple reviews for some vendors, as well as reviews for some bigger agencies.

The group last week began the program promoting the scheme with a PR push.

Evan Greene, CMO for the Grammys, says he's a "big fan" of the vendor-rating program and has both submitted reviews and used the service for recommendations.

"It's really helpful to see what people in a similar role are doing. It's an open exchange of ideas and recommendations".

But the project begs a thorny question.

Will busy marketers - who are concerned with everything from product development to distribution channels to consumer awareness, and not just their agency relationships - have time to regularly log on to submit their recommendations?

Moreover, will they actually be willing to spill the beans? Especially as most marketers view the work done by their agencies as a competitive advantage.

Reassures Krainik: "The review process is not laborious" although it certainly is thorough.

Each entry has fifteen questions, with a mix of drop-down menus and open-ended questions, in addition to basic information like reviewer name and vendor name.

CMOs can rank vendors on quality of service, on-time delivery, price and customer service. Mr. Krainik says that reviews can't be anonymous, and notes that he has personally approved each member of the club.

Read the original unabridged AdAge article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... even more agency ingestions. 

The coalition, led by so-called 'corporate advisory boutique' Clarity Capital Partners [CCP], predicts a boom in mergers and acquisitions this year as the big holding groups step up their acquisition efforts, especially in digital and social media.

The biggest takeover in Britain last year was the £3.2bn purchase of Aegis by Japan's Dentsu, in addition to which there were a series of other deals, including the sale of Adam & Eve to Omnicom, BBH to Publicis and AKQA to WPP.

"We expect this level of activity to continue," says Marcus Anselm, partner at CCP, who described this trend of big groups using acquisitions as a means to grab talent as "acquahire".

Anselm cites the sale of Adam & Eve, on which he advised, as an example. Omnicom has used the agency, known for its acclaimed John Lewis ads, to inject energy into its existing subsidiary DDB, by merging the two shops to form Adam & Eve/DDB.

According to stockbroker Brewin Dolphin, more than 90% of takeovers in the advertising sector last year were for companies with a value below £30m, while roughly 70% were specialists in digital advertising.

Read the original unabridged independent.co.uk article.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... reveal its clients [if any yet?], although the Redmond hype machine predicts that "Studio 415's focus will be on brands in the retail, auto and consumer packaged-goods categories, addressing such issues such as 'retail experience transformation' and 'omni-channel marketing'."

According to Rick Chavez, general manager of Microsoft's online-services division, who is overseeing Studio 415, Microsoft is looking "to inform what we're building with the priorities of our customers, and to give them early access to the kind of innovation that we expect to scale more broadly over time."

As a hypothetical example Chavez cites: "An automaker that wants to give customers a better experience in dealerships might work on a project with Microsoft to integrate a Kinect device in showroom vehicles, which could then use facial recognition to gauge whether they had liked the experience of sitting in the car. Or an Xbox could be put into the vehicle to let customers hear their own playlist from the driver's seat. The overriding idea is for marketer collaboration to inform the production of Microsoft's consumer-facing products."

The AdAge article comments that "For a tech company, Microsoft seems to be taking a unique approach with its clients".

To all intents and purposes, Microsoft looks to be bypassing agencies and going straight to brands. Chavez said that Microsoft has been in talks with search and display advertisers and enterprise customers about the program, which could be expanded to New York if it catches on.

Participation will be fee-based, but Microsoft declined to say what the fee would be. It's goal is to concurrently accommodate two clients in the San Francisco location that would work intensively with Microsoft teams for a year and deliver an execution every ninety days.

Meantime, rival tech titan Google has assiduously courted the agency world with its Creative Sandbox, which it describes as "a resource for agency creatives to learn about Google products such as Android and YouTube through events and publications.

Why did Microsoft choose San Francisco for Studio 415's base instead of Silicon Valley, where it has a campus in Mountain View? Mr. Chavez said the city felt like a hotbed of innovation with the presence of Twitter, Zynga and the myriad startups populating the city's South Park neighborhood.

"It's become a fun mecca for digital innovators," he said.

Fun? Microsoft? Maybe it'll rain in the Sahara tomorrow.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

...  marketers' agency remuneration models mirror, in many cases, existing US practices. For example:

• Fees are the dominant method of agency compensation, globally practiced by 57% of respondents. An additional 37% of respondents utilize fees in combination with commissions.
   
• Although many marketers use traditional media commissions in combination with fees, no respondents to this survey indicated that they use only traditional commissions to compensate their global agencies.
   
• New methods of compensation, like value-based remuneration, have not taken hold globally. Only 4% reported utilizing them.
   
• Half of respondents now employ performance-based incentives (46% percent in the US compared with 49% globally).

Important differences emerged in the survey, however:

• Far more global marketers employ a combination of fees and commissions than in the US (37% versus 6%). According to David Beals, president/ceo of R3:JLB, who worked with the ANA and analyzed the results of the survey, two factors contributed to this finding:
  
  
  • In markets like Japan and Brazil, commissions are still the dominant compensation practice.
  • In smaller markets, where client marketing investments are less predictable, marketing spending does not easily allow for ongoing retainer-based compensation.
     
• Global marketers are considerably more likely to base incentive criteria on metrics such as media delivery, brand perception, digital delivery and copy testing, and far less likely [than in the US] to employ sales metrics as a success criterion.

Comments ANA president/ceo Bob Liodice: “With this groundbreaking survey – the first-ever conducted on a global basis – the marketing community now has a vital benchmark to track worldwide approaches and innovations in how marketers compensate their agency partners.

“Global marketers will now be better able to understand how their peers are wrestling with the challenges of compensating agencies across diverse countries, cultures and conditions.”

Read the original unabridged article here.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... “Marketers need lasting solutions that focus on efficiency. We need to view this as an opportunity to push our industry to reach the next level of innovation and evolution.” 

These are the key areas of insights for this year’s Recession Survey:

Agency Compensation

• Only 17 percent of marketers plan to reduce agency compensation, representing the most hopeful outlook for agencies since 2008.
   
• However, 52 percent of those marketers surveyed will challenge their agencies to reduce costs internally, placing pressure on agencies to share the cost-effectiveness load.
   

Marketing / Media Budgets & Projected Spending

• In the coming year, marketers will continue to be conscientious in their spending, even as the economy recovers.
   
• Given this cautious environment, nearly half of marketers surveyed (49 percent) said that their advertising budgets will remain the same.
   
• However, a third said their budgets will decrease (34 percent).
   
• The remaining group of respondents (17 percent) believe their advertising budgets will increase.
   
• For those companies that plan to reduce budgets, reductions are expected to be higher than last year, with 33 percent planning to reduce marketing budgets by 11 percent or more, compared to 25 percent in 2011.

Overhead Spending Insights

• Marketers are opting for short-term budget cuts related to overhead expenditures.
   
• For example, 28 percent of marketers plan to decrease investment in professional development (eg, conferences, training) and 21 percent plan to utilize more freelancers to fill open positions – both increases from 2011.

The most popular ways marketers plan to reduce costs and expenditures:

• Restricting departmental travel and related expenses (68 percent)
   
• Reducing advertising campaign media budgets (48 percent)
   
• Altering the mix of marketing channels to lower cost channels (40 percent)
   
• Eliminating / delaying new projects (36 percent)

Summarises Mr Liodice: “Though the industry outlook is trending toward stability, marketers need to be careful not to simply rely on short-term answers to solve enduring budget issues."

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... increase consumer engagement, reach and overall campaign performance.

Says Edward Montes, ceo of Adnetik: “Partnering with Cognitive Match is the next step toward accomplishing the Adnetik mission of maximizing an advertiser’s investment in media.

Leveraging Cognitive Match’s Dynamic Creative Targeting platform in conjunction with the AIM targeting system provides marketers with a breakthrough for driving greater display ad performance.”

Using Cognitive Match’s Dynamic Creative Targeting platform, Adnetik will enable advertisers to increase acquisition and reach for both brand and performance campaigns. Combined with Adnetik’s sophisticated targeting tools, advertisers can easily increase the effectiveness of their online display advertising campaigns.

Cognitive Match founder/ceo Alex Kelleher can be excused a [justifiable] plug: “Marketers are now successfully targeting the right audience profile with their display ad campaigns, but they still don’t know what elements within the creative are eliciting response from individual users.

"The collaboration between Adnetik and Cognitive Match means that advertisers can now target the right audience with the right creative at the right time. Every stage of the campaign lifecycle is now optimized.”

What's more, Adnetik clients can easily turn on dynamic creative for their display ad campaigns.

Explains Kelleher: “The trick is to make meaningful decisions in real-time,” he says, offering an example of a travel category advertiser trying to target users based on variables like location, weather conditions and time and date -- all of which can greatly influence a user’s predisposition to a specific advertising message.

“If it’s hot weather and they’re on the East Coast and they’re at work during a weekday we know that’s going to generate a different behavior than if they are someone from the West Coast and it’s cold and on the weekend,” he explains.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... Ogilvy & Mather, JWT, Grey, Y&R and Wunderman.

The partyline, according to a WPP spokesman is that the agencies "have decided to seek greater efficiencies in their companies and presently plan to have 'non-client' facing services delivered from an offshore specialist center in India.

In most cases, the positions affected are in New York, but finance department staff in other North American offices may also be impacted. WPP's partyline: "The total number of jobs under consideration represent less than one percent of overall staff (including associates) and the job transfer will happen over the coming months."

Toeing that line at Ogilvy & Mather -- which will bear the brunt of the cuts -- was O&M Worldwide chief marketing officer Eleanor Mascheroni who claims: "This action will reduce overhead costs while maintaining the quality and level of support we provide to our clients and partners.

"We have entered into an agreement with a top-tier business-process outsourcing services provider specializing in this kind of service delivery at lower costs to handle the processes. Many of our clients have been working with this model for many years."

Ms Mascheroni, however, curiously failed to mention that the jobs will go to outsourcing giant Genpact which -- by one of those odd coincidences -- also happens to be a major client of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

Genpact is an offshoot of GE Capital and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It operates in seventeen countries and supports over twenty-five languages.

Which begs the question as to when the New York cull will be extended to other WPP locations?

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.

... a new phase in an 8-month-old, crowd-sourced, artificial-intelligence project conducted with the MIT Media Lab and IT consulting company Nihon Unisys.

Finding Gifts with Sasha helps users choose gifts through conversations with the boy character. "At first, his gift suggestions may not be perfect," Dentsu admits, "but the system learns from the user's feedback in the same way that children do in the course of their development."

Links to ecommerce sites are provided for the suggested gifts.

Before making its gift recommendations the digital prodigy analyzes the profiles and comments posted on social media sites both by the user and the intended gift recipient.

Sasha also has the help of 200,000 pieces of "common sense" observations assimilated into a database during earlier phases of the project. The first, Play a Quiz Game with Nadya, used a girl character to gather logical suggestions from participating players.

The second, Poi Bot, used a personalized robot character to automatically generate Tweets, imitating each user's distinctive communication style and way of thinking.

According to Dentsu, Sasha works deductively rather than literally: Based on a 'common sense' statement such as "cats like warm places," someone seeking a gift for a cat-lover won't be directed to an actual cat, but to things that would make a cat feel warm.

The ultimate aim of the project, Dentsu says, is to "leverage the shared common background knowledge and senses -- used by humans when we converse with others -- to create a computer system that can understand implicit meanings and nuances of language in the same way as humans."

Dentsu is a sponsor of the MIT Media Lab's Things That Think consortium.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.