Media Buying

If you caught my LinkedIn post, you know I’ve got some serious beef with the current ad agency model. I mean, let’s call a spade a spade—it’s broken. Outdated. And in desperate need of a shake-up. Apparently, I struck a nerve because that post blew up. We’re talking over 800,000 impressions, 5,000 reactions and…

US agencies might be looking at a loss of over 50,000 jobs by the end of 2021, per Forrester estimates cited by AdExchanger. For reference, in total an estimated 250,000 people were employed by ad agencies as of the end of 2019, per IBISWorld. Outside of the US, job losses are expected to match…

The death of the cookie – the revolution we face in the digital ad industry is not “just” about the rethinking of some technical processes.  This is a much more complex process that will redefine web standards, affect the practical ways advertisers will market their products and impact the survival…

Dr Johnny Ryan speaks at P&G from Johnny Ryan on Vimeo. Understanding the RTB environment and why it is not sustainable under new data protection regulations like GDPR.

For the last 20 years, marketers have been pouring more and more money into digital advertising. In fact, the most recent IAB report showed that $125 billion was spent in digital in the U.S. in 2019 and about $350 billion worldwide. That’s a lot of money. But is it money…

Today we are up to Article number Six in our series of Ten.  We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, and thanks very much for staying with me through this. These are very intertwined tips and observations. As you’ve already seen, there is some crossover from one tip to…

When the curtain comes up on the summer of 2020, the stage is set in a tempest. Marketers have retooled creative strategies. Media companies have had to manage record-high levels of user engagement while navigating a business environment marked by one of the most challenging dichotomies ever: a sky-high supply of…

It’s not hard to sit through a Super Bowl’s worth of commercials and tease out some trends. As a whole, the creative was a notch above last year’s. The humorous moments felt genuinely funnier without a shred of meanness (though, not everyone hit their marks, of course). It was also a…

This note examines the GDPR requirement that marketers conduct data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) when buying digital media using “real-time bidding” advertising.  Summary: A 2018 European Court of Justice decision demonstrates that a marketer that buys targeted advertising is a “controller” of the personal data used for that targeting, even if…

Change is afoot at the U.K.’s data protection watchdog, responsible for enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation. Top execs from the Information Commissioner’s Office have been on a PR push of late, appearing on stage at industry events, agreeing to interviews with the press to deliver a simple message, again and again:…