New York, United States; April 25, 2024 – IPG Mediabrands, the media holding company within Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) announced today a new, global partnership with Adelaide, the leader in attention-based media quality measurement. The deal, brokered by performance marketing unit KINESSO, will provide all IPG Mediabrands agencies with access to Adelaide’s robust attention data across omnichannel ad supply.
Attention data is garnering increasing importance as a reliable indicator for media quality and supply management at a time when agencies and clients alike are seeking more transparency in an increasingly fragmented ecosystem. The collaboration will offer IPG Mediabrands access to new data to inform media planning, attention measurement for campaigns across a wide variety of channels including television, digital, social, in-platform custom bidding algorithms, and activation on Adelaide’s high-attention auction packages provided through leading SSPs. Not to mention, the use of Flight Control – Adelaide’s just-launched planning tool that helps advertisers identify the optimal levels of media quality to drive consistent and predictable campaign performance.
“We are excited to join forces with Adelaide,” said Justin Wroe, US CEO at IPG Mediabrands. “This partnership will bring more accountability to our clients’ campaigns at a time when they’re seeking more granular data and insights as they navigate an ever-changing, fragmented landscape. Adelaide’s offering will advance our data & tech capabilities and shape performance like never before.”
“Our global partnership with IPG Mediabrands is the culmination of years of research, collaborative efforts, and a shared commitment to redefining media quality measurement and advertising effectiveness. It builds upon our work with agencies like Mediahub, who have been at the forefront of attention measurement, working with our teams to demonstrate the tangible impact of our AU metric on brand outcomes,” said Marc Guldimann, CEO of Adelaide. “Through this collaboration, IPG Mediabrands can integrate precise attention data into all areas of its practice, from measurement and planning to optimization and activation, empowering its agencies to deliver superior outcomes across their diverse client portfolios.”
For nearly a decade, brand safety has been the ad world’s white whale — constantly evading the harpoon of those looking to steer clear of dangerous or salacious content. But the proliferation of generative AI has conjured up an even scarier kind of monster: a multi-headed hydra.
The fight is already on. To boost its efforts around brand safety, IPG Mediabrands is adding more tools for identifying harmful content while also helping advertisers avoid appearing near it. One way is through an expanded partnership with Zefr, a brand-safety startup that tracks content across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Along with new ways to pre-block high-risk social content, the companies are creating custom dashboards to help advertisers avoid user-generated content in sensitive categories across text, images, video and audio. Sensitive categories include AI-generated content and misinformation related to U.S. politics, climate denialism, health care and brand-specific content.
“We already have a lot of tools in the programmatic space to help manage misinformation, manage brand safety [and] suitability, but there has always been a void when it comes to UGC in walled gardens,” said Ruowen Liscio, vice president of global commerce and innovation partnerships at Kinesso.
By targeting harmful content, the companies hope to not just help advertisers but also cut off ad funding for such content. According to Zefr chief commercial officer Andrew Serby, misinformation-related content from AI and other sources stays on platforms because it’s funded by ad dollars. But combatting that funding first requires identifying the misinformation and its sources at scale.
To understand consumer perceptions about misinformation — and the ads that appear by it — IPG’s Magna conducted research about how people viewed harmful content and how it affected their perceptions about brands and platforms. Only 36% of respondents to a survey featured in the research thought it was appropriate for brands to appear next to AI-generated content. Ads that appeared next to misinformation were also seen as less trustworthy, and brand perception was hurt even when people weren’t sure if content was real or not.
Although political content was easiest for survey participants to identify, only 44% correctly identified the fake political content, 15% were incorrect and the rest were unsure. AI-generated content — including images of U.S. presidents playing Pokémon and Pope Francis wearing Balenciaga — fooled 23% of respondents and left 41% unsure. Meanwhile, 33% of respondents incorrectly identified misinformation about climate change and 25% were wrong about healthcare-related misinformation.
“What was most important for us that came out of the research is just the ability to understand the quantified impact of what happens when brands appear next to misinformation,” said Kara Manatt, evp of intelligence solutions at Magna.
Companies in the business of AI-generated content are also researching consumer sentiment. In a new report from Adobe, 80% of U.S. adults think misinformation and harmful deepfakes will impact upcoming elections. According to the survey, 78% of respondents thought election candidates shouldn’t be allowed to use AI-generated content in campaigns, while 83% think the government and tech companies should work together to address problems with AI-generated misinformation. The survey results, released last week, include answers from 6,000 people in the U.S. and several European countries.
The findings come amidst debates about whether tech companies should be liable for information on their platforms. The U.S. Supreme Court is also considering a legal battlesonline content including whether government officials should be allowed communicate with tech companies about disinformation on various platforms. Meanwhile, Rest Of The World, a global media nonprofit, also published a new website for tracking election-related AI content across major platforms in nearly a dozen countries.
Concerns exist across numerous online platforms including X. Even as DoubleVerify claimed the platform formerly known as Twitter was 99% brand-safe, a report from ISD found examples of dozens of AI-generated misinformation images that were posted by verified accounts hours after Iran’s drone strike on Israel and viewed 37 million times within hours.
Adobe’s report helps illustrate the importance of people and companies having tools to identify what’s true and what’s not. Misinformation fueled by generative AI is “one of the most critical threats facing us as a society,” said Andy Parsons, senior director of the Content Authenticity Initiative at Adobe. In an interview last week, Parsons told Digiday that it’s important that people continue to trust verified news sources and don’t begin to question everything when the lines between truth and fiction become too blurred.
“There’s this liar’s dividend, which is once you can question anything and nothing can actually be believed to be true,” Parsons said. “Then how do you even verify that news is news or that you’re not seeing somebody else’s worldview? Or that you’re not being duped with even social media content [even if] it’s from a news source. And then what is the news source if you can’t believe anything you see because it may have been manipulated?”
In other words, there are as many questions as the hydra has heads — if not more.
Read the full article here.
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–IPG Mediabrands, the media holding company within Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) announced today the launch of the Climate Action Accelerator Program. This initiative aims to empower our clients and media partners with turnkey sustainability solutions rooted in science-informed action. Across the globe, climate responses and disclosure regulations are rapidly evolving. The advertising industry – via the World Federation of Advertisers Global Alliance on Responsible Media and Ad Net Zero – is working to create standards for media-emissions reporting with an eye toward reducing emissions and contributing to a more sustainable future.
IPG Mediabrands has forged partnerships that provide clients with streamlined and cost-effective access to preferred sustainability partners, delivering operational effectiveness in four key areas:
“The importance of public-private and non-profit partnership can’t be stressed enough. We must all work together to create durable, meaningful and measurable climate solutions and we are incredibly proud to partner with these respected organizations to provide essential services to both our clients and our partners,” said Martin Bryan, Global Chief Sustainability Officer of IPG Mediabrands.
“Measurement is one of the critical pillars in addressing the climate crisis, emissions that are measured, can be reduced. We are excited to partner with IPG Mediabrands to make our cost-effective carbon platform available to media partners, so that they can get started or accelerate their climate journey” shared Richard Davis, CEO and Co-Founder of 51 to Carbon Zero.
“At Schneider Electric, we are committed to a swift transition to clean energy, and eager to partner with IPG Mediabrands’ clients and partners to make that as seamless as possible,” said Boone Jones, Manager, Client Development Sustainability Business of Schneider Electric.
“High-quality carbon removals are essential for meeting climate targets. Carbon Direct is honored to support IPG Mediabrands’ clients and partners with portfolios of best-in-class carbon removal credits and the resources that they need to integrate them into their climate strategies,” shared Micah Macfarlane, Chief Supply Officer, Carbon Direct.
“Cornell Engineering is developing the tools, the knowledge, and the workforce necessary for a sustainable future. We have a long history of providing the innovation and research essential for forward-looking companies, like IPG Mediabrands’ clients and partners, to build lasting change within their existing systems,” said Jillian Goldfarb, Associate Professor at Cornell Engineering.
In addition to offering access to the many partnerships that exist in this space across IPG Mediabrands, the Climate Action Accelerator Program will help clients develop products that aim to reduce emissions generated in the activation of media on behalf of their clients. This announcement builds upon IPG Mediabrands’ ongoing partnership with Scope3, which helps clients measure, compensate and reduce emissions from the digital advertising supply chain.
New data-backed campaign tools developed from media intelligence by MAGNA on the impact of misinformation on brands
NEW YORK, (APRIL 17, 2024) – IPG Mediabrands and Zefr announce first-in-kind agency partnership designed to tackle misinformation and enhance brand safety and suitability for online campaigns. Backed by extensive research data from IPG Mediabrands’ media intelligence and investment unit, MAGNA, and powered by tech-driven performance unit, KINESSO, the new collaboration will deliver campaign solutions that enable brands with the capability to avoid misinformation across social platforms in priority areas including political, climate, healthcare, AI-generated, and brand-specific content. This partnership extends the existing collaboration between IPG Mediabrands and Zefr; and it is aligned to the agency network’s Media for Good efforts which focus on driving impact within and outside of its business through Brand Safety, Media Responsibility, Marketplace Equity, and Sustainability.
“Helping our clients to protect their brands while reaching their audiences through the most effective channels is core to the work we do as their agency partners,” said Dani Benowitz, US & Global President, MAGNA. “By engaging in specialized partnerships like this with Zefr, we are ensuring our clients have access not only to our in-house expertise, but also to the best tools and capabilities the industry has to offer, so their media investments are strategic and made with relevant, high industry standards in mind.”
Preview of Zefr’s Capabilities Now Available:
The ad environment is primed for misinformation with major cyclical events and growing ad spend.
The 2024 election cycle is expected to generate $9 billion of additional ad revenue for media owners, which is +13% higher than 2020 spending levels, according to MAGNA’s latest U.S. Ad Forecast. Overall, most industry verticals will grow their ad spend this year, and digital pure players are set to capture most of that market growth, with ad sales across several media channels expected to outperform including social media (+14%) and short-form digital video (+12% to $22bn).
“At Zefr, we have been proactive in tackling misinformation across walled gardens, combining advanced AI for multi-media with global fact-checking networks,” said Andrew Serby, Chief Commercial Officer at Zefr. “IPG’s leadership in combating misinformation for their clients is second to none, and this partnership underscores that commitment towards this critical issue. Together, we are accelerating the fight against misinformation across walled gardens, applying media responsibility to client investment around the world.”
Building on previous research on consumer perceptions of misinformation, the new MAGNA Media Trials and Zefr study “Ads in Misinformation” tested ad effectiveness of standard content (i.e. verified information) against misinformation for brands in the Auto, CPG, Insurance, and Finance industries. The study included more than 2,000 participants in the U.S., who browsed an in-feed social media experience in a controlled, mobile environment. Each participant was randomly served an ad then surveyed to measure their feedback against brand KPIs and ad adjacency. The study found that advertising next to misinformation led to wasted ad dollars for brands, eroded brand perception, and negatively impacted performance KPIs. And while political and AI-generated “fake news” can be easier to spot, consumers still are critical of brands that advertise next to it.
Key Findings from the MAGNA Media Trials Study:
The insights from this MAGNA Media Trial informed the development of the new campaign tools. These misinformation capabilities are currently being rolled out across the integrated, end-to-end campaign process delivered by KINESSO for IPG Mediabrands’ clients.
If you’re sick of hearing about the volatile macroeconomic environment, Magna has some decent news.
The US ad market is set to grow this year.
US ad revenues are expected to increase by 6.7% to $360 billion, excluding cyclical spending, according to a Magna forecast released Thursday. And when you add political campaigns and international sporting events like the Olympics to the mix, US ad revenues are set to increase 9.2%.
These numbers are nearly a percentage point higher than Magna’s December end-of-year forecast, which predicted 5.9% growth – or 8.4% when accounting for political and Olympics-related ad spend.
Factors contributing to Magna’s sunny outlook for 2024, according to Vincent Letang, Magna’s EVP of global market intelligence, include an improved economy, GDP growth, greater consumer confidence, “the perception that inflation is now fully stabilized and under control” and the strength of digital channels.
Spending stallions
Digital media will be especially robust in 2024, growing its portion of total ad spend to 72%, or $261 billion.
But streaming in particular will be on fire (in a good way).
Premium long-form streaming platforms – Hulu, Peacock, Max, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix – will collectively grow 13% this year to reach a milestone of $10 billion in ad revenue. Most of these projected ad sales will redound to Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, all of which have introduced ad-supported tiers. “There’s more supply [and] more impressions available to advertisers,” Letang said.
The addition of live sports to many of these platforms also makes streaming more attractive to advertisers. Sports attract large, highly engaged audiences, particularly when it comes to tentpole events like the Super Bowl, NASCAR’s Daytona 500 and the Olympics. Magna predicts that the Olympics will generate roughly $1 billion in incremental ad spend this year.
Magna also expects social media – which encompasses Meta, TikTok, Snap and X as well as smaller platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest and Reddit – to grow by about 13% to reach $80 billion, with an assist from short-form vertical video.
Despite the popularity of short-form video among consumers, it took a while for companies like TikTok and Meta to figure out how to efficiently monetize the ad format, Letang said. But that dynamic is changing. Reels, for example, now contribute to Meta’s net revenue across its apps.
Meanwhile, short-form “pure player” digital video ad revenue (think Twitch and YouTube) is projected to grow 12% this year to $22 billion.
And search, which includes product searches on retail media networks, is expected to increase by 12% to $146 billion in 2024.
“A lot of CPG marketing budgets are going into digital ad formats – specifically, keyword formats,” Letang said. Large retailers like Walmart and Target are therefore seeing incremental gains in revenue.
Downward spirals
But it’s not all chocolate, growth and roses.
Legacy linear ad formats, including linear TV, radio and print publishing, will continue their slow descent this year.
Linear TV ad sales will fall 9%, and national TV revenue, which includes linear and long-form AVOD, will decrease by almost 5% to $44 billion.
Traditional TV’s reach, ratings, ad volume and ad prices are eroding as audiences leave for greener – as in streaming – pastures. “Video consumption is not going down,” Letang said. “People are simply moving to streaming platforms.”
Still, linear comprises $34 billion of that total, versus roughly $10 billion for streaming. In other words, despite the success of streaming, it’s not generating enough revenue to make up for losses in linear.
Local TV revenue, on the other hand, is expected to increase by 26% to $23 billion this year, thanks to political advertising. Excluding political advertising, however, “it’s a very different picture,” Letang said, with revenues shrinking by 4% to $17 billion.
Give me a boost
Although cyclical events like the Summer Olympics and the Copa América soccer tournament spur ad spending, Magna believes political sales will have the most significant impact on ad revenue this year. Political ad spend alone will amount to $9 billion in incremental revenue for media owners during this US election cycle.
In fact, political advertising “has been growing nonstop” since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, Letang said. This 2010 ruling let corporations, unions and other groups spend unrestricted amounts of money on political advertising. The decision spurred the rise of super political actions committees that can independently produce campaign ads and private donations from undisclosed donors.
Magna expects this year to be the strongest ever for political spend, Letang said, predicting a 13% bump, compared to the previous presidential election cycle in 2020.
One reason for the vigorous political spending is polarization, which may be bad for the country, but is good for ad spend. Even local races for Board of Education candidates or sheriff have become extremely competitive, resulting in candidates spending more than usual on local TV commercials and other ads.
But 13% growth is actually a downward projection. Magna lowered its political forecast to 13%, from 18% in December, because fundraising spend – which Magna treats as a proxy for political ad spend – was down at the end of February compared to 2020.
Even so, “it’s [still] too early to call it,” Letang said. “There’s still plenty of time for fundraising efforts to go to the next gear and catch up to or surpass 2020.”
Read the full report here.
IPG Mediabrands is Ad Age’s 2024 U.S. Network of the Year
The Emerging Tech Assessment Enables IPG Mediabrands Agencies to Deliver Unparallelled Campaign Results for Brands Despite Impending Signal Loss
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–KINESSO, the IPG Mediabrands technology-driven performance marketing agency within Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) announced today the launch of their Emerging Tech Assessment (ETA), a next-gen solution for brands looking to optimize campaign performance in a post-cookie world. This proprietary offering is the most comprehensive offering of its kind, specifically designed to assess and mitigate potential performance risks for clients and marketers alike.
The quickly approaching phase-out of third-party cookies signifies a pivotal shift in the digital advertising landscape, with significant impact expected to attribution, cross-platform measurement, audience tactics, and optimization capabilities. The ETA is an exciting and necessary advancement, offering a unified approach to measure campaign success through the analysis of client’s digital media investments – categorizing spend into high, medium, and low risk – in the absence of cookies. The ETA also grants brands access to a qualitative review that examines the readiness of their technological infrastructure to adopt next-generation strategies and improves their preparedness for performance continuity.
KINESSO has built a global solution that outshines competitor offerings through pioneering features that provide empowering and actionable insights, including evaluating digital spend holistically across channels. Notably, ETA prioritizes actions based on a thorough risk evaluation, a critical step missing from most in-market solutions. It is backed by a systematic and automated data collection process that is integral to assessing campaigns in forensic detail to inform strategic decision-making. This custom approach not only de-risks client spend but simultaneously opens avenues for service revenue growth.
“Our clients rely on us to navigate the complexities of digital marketing, and the demise of third-party cookies presents a significant challenge,” said Chris Schimkat, Global Head of Analytics at KINESSO. “The Emerging Tech Assessment is our proactive solution to safeguard client investments, maintain campaign effectiveness, and leverage our strategic partnerships with industry giants like Google, Amazon Ads, and Meta.”
Key benefits of the Emerging Tech Assessment include:
KINESSO’s commitment to innovation and client success is at the heart of the ETA, positioning the agency as a trusted advisor in the face of industry-wide transformation. The agency is currently working to scale this offering so that all IPG Mediabrands clients have the opportunity to benefit from the ETA.
Adobe to Leverage Acxiom Data and Identity Products to Enrich its Customer Profiles and Audience Creation Capabilities
New York, NY, Feb. 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) announced a global partnership with Adobe to power content creation and activation across the company’s operations. IPG is the first company to integrate Adobe GenStudio – which enables brands to speed up content ideation, creation, production and activation through generative AI – into its own marketing technology platform.
IPG’s engine streamlines and automates the end-to-end customer experience, helping brands find better ways to engage, convert and retain audiences through paid, owned and earned channels and on an individual level. Adobe GenStudio powers the content supply chain within the IPG engine, harnessing the combined capabilities of Adobe Workfront, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Express, Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative AI models, and Frame.io. Within the IPG engine, IPG deploys proprietary Acxiom data and identity products to create a more accurate picture of consumers and more authentic connections with brands. The IPG engine also leverages investments that marketers are already making in marketing technology and media to integrate customer intelligence across the content engagement landscape.
By uniting top-tier partner technology with proprietary data, IPG’s engine supercharges content, experiences, and commerce, at scale. The IPG engine is being deployed across the entire IPG portfolio, and offers combinations of content lifecycle support with creation, curation, assembly, personalization, and measurement, empowering every marketing discipline and client team to deliver exceptional results with efficiency for brands.
This partnership with Adobe underscores IPG’s commitment to innovation, demonstrating significant investments in data, technology, and AI. “Marketers today are looking to accelerate personalized connections with consumers, with an audience and commerce-led approach to every engagement. This new partnership with Adobe takes our capabilities to a new level. We’re deploying a unified operating system across our entire portfolio, fueled by data and audience insights, to craft content strategies that enhance human creativity with ethically sourced gen AI,” said Philippe Krakowsky, CEO of IPG.
At the heart of this collaboration is the integration of Adobe’s GenStudio into IPG’s marketing technology platform. “Brands are struggling to meet the growing demand for digital content, particularly now that consumers rightly expect experiences to be personalized to their individual tastes and preferences and delivered in real-time,” said Anil Chakravarthy, President, Digital Experience Business at Adobe. “By leveraging Adobe GenStudio, IPG is bringing together comprehensive, best-in-class creative and digital marketing capabilities, fueled by generative AI, with IPG Engine to deliver its clients true content velocity at the speed of social.”
Adobe and Acxiom are mutually focused on delivering improved customer value through their data and identity products—unlocking value for clients by anchoring personalization in comprehensive customer insights. To accelerate this effort, Acxiom’s data and identity products will be leveraged to enrich the underlying capabilities of Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform—enhancing everything from AI-driven audience creation to identity resolution.
“By harnessing Acxiom’s rich data resources, we’re able to amplify Adobe’s AI tools, enriching customer data profiles and delivering unparalleled insights for enhanced personalization, improved engagement, and superior outcomes. Our operating system transforms the way brands and marketers approach customer experiences, whether it’s for information, entertainment, or shopping. We’re excited to bring this offering to our clients and drive actionable growth for their businesses,” shared Jayna Kothary, Chief Solutions Officer, IPG.
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–IPG Mediabrands, the media holding company within Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) announced today it’s been awarded a Global ISO 27001:2013 certification for its quality information security management system (ISMS).
The ISO/IEC 27001 is widely recognized as the international standard for information security through the building and maintenance of an information security management system. Requirements include optimal security controls that systematically examine for security risks, such as risk avoidance or risk transfers, vulnerabilities within core system capabilities, monitoring for ongoing impact, and taking measurable account of potential threats. The ISO 27001 is the only auditable standard that is inclusive of overall management of information security versus the singular focus of implementing technical controls within IT management systems.
IPG Mediabrands certification was issued by Schellman after undergoing an assessment and audit of the information systems and processes to ensure global compliance. With this recognition of premium security practices, IPG Mediabrands Information Technology affirms its investment in privacy protection and the ability to keep client data safe by taking proactive measures.
“At IPG Mediabrands, we are committed to building trust and instilling confidence among our leaders and clients that our safety and security practices far exceed industry standards,” said Frank Ribitch, Global Chief Information Officer, IPG Mediabrands. “At a time of rapid change and increasingly sophisticated external threats, the ISO 27001 certification is an important step in the right direction to ensure our Information Technology capabilities and compliance practices remain ahead of the curve.”
“We are very proud to have certified all our locations globally and it is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our teams who manage our data with assurance across all levels. Our commitment to upholding the ISO 27001 certification is not a one and done process, but rather, we strive to renew and uphold our certification each year,” said Myra Santos, SVP Cybersecurity Compliance Risk Officer at IPG Mediabrands.
