Table of contents for January 18, 2021 in Adweek

The fallout from the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill is still being tallied by the courts, law enforcement and Congress. But repercussions for President Donald Trump, who has been impeached by the House of Representatives for inciting the deadly insurrection, came swiftly from the same platforms that had been hesitant to censor him even during the darkest moments of his term. Several social networks temporarily suspended accounts affiliated with or held by the outgoing president until Inauguration Day (Jan. 20) to avert further violence, including Google-owned YouTube, Twitch and Facebook, which is also purging posts containing potentially inflammatory phrases such as “stop the steal.” Others went so far as to issue permanent bans beginning with Trump’s preferred social media outlet, Twitter, and followed by Snapchat. Deutsche Bank, which holds…

When we were living the pandemic in two-week increments back in March, holding out hope that we’d return to “regular life” soon and that this whole quarantine was a blip, our newsroom started filming a daily TV show called Adweek Together. Dozens of guests came on to share their thoughts, frustrations and triumphs in the early days of what we now know as a global crisis. In one episode, I asked Tiffany R. Warren, executive vp, chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sony Music Group, and founder of ADCOLOR, for advice on maintaining DEI initiatives remotely, and I’ll never forget what she said: “I have to live it first.” We have lived it, reader. More than 300 days of it. And while there are still many unknowns, our editors have dug…

As marketing professionals, we are uniquely positioned to shape how people think, see themselves and view the world. Marketing has the power to influence culture; this is a power we should not take lightly. Our storytelling exposes people to perspectives. We decide what stories get told. We decide what stories don’t get told. We decide what voices to amplify. In the weeks following the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, brands have recognized that silence is no longer an option when it comes to social justice and the lack of diversity across the industry. People’s expectations for brands have evolved as consumers are aligning their values with their pocketbooks. With a convergence of growing challenges, we expect brands to respond with more than a hashtag or empty…

Percentage of publishers that are either very or slightly optimistic about the year ahead. 68% SOURCE: ADWEEK INTELLIGENCE Percentage by which digital CPMs decreased in April. ▾ 16% Percentage of publishers reporting a decrease in ad rates in April. ▾ 60% SOURCE: INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU A THIRD OF PUBLISHERS EXPECT CHURN TO INCREASE IN THE NEXT SIX MONTHS. SOURCE: ZEPHR 6% PUBLISHERS’ AVERAGE MONTHLY CHURN RATE 8% PUBLISHERS’ AVERAGE MONTHLY SIGN-UP RATE SOURCE: ZUORA…

WHERE WE WERE When 2020 started, several problems were bubbling under the surface for agencies: bloated organizations, brands moving away from the agency-of-record model, in-housing, consultancies, consolidation of publishing and a lack of diversity. Agencies sensed their relevance was dwindling, and they started to make changes—not necessarily very quickly, but there were signs of forward motion. Then the rest of 2020 happened. When the pandemic hit in the spring, the mission for agencies became survival. Many people lost their jobs—Forrester predicts the number will top 50,000 people by the end of this year—and slight revenue declines became major victories. Week after week, we at Adweek had the depressingly unenviable (and quite frankly, difficult) task of telling those stories. Then, the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many…

WHERE WE WERE There are a lot of words that could be used to describe 2020—“unprecedented,” for one; “pandemic” is an obvious choice. But if you’re a brand, the word that best encapsulates the year is “pivot.” Pivoting is precisely what brands, big and small and across categories, had to do starting in March. The marketing community united around the need for rapid adjustments and overhauls. It was an impressive accomplishment, because the world of brands is a massive one, encompassing companies that make the products we desperately need in times of crisis—ahem, toilet paper—and those we most definitely do not, as much as we like them (looking at you, $1,000 handbags). All brands seemed to realize that trends steadily creeping up on the horizon were much closer than they…

With the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics just six months away, NBC Sports Group is working with marketers to help them craft more effective ads for the Summer Games. The Olympics Ad Engine uses past Games’ spots and data to make suggestions on how new ads can be modified to achieve specific marketing objectives. “2021 is going to provide brands with a once-in-a-generation opportunity for exponential growth,” said NBCUniversal ad sales and partnerships president Mark Marshall.…

Beer kegs collect dust, abandoned and untapped. Gym ellipticals sit silent without their usual sheen of sweat. Pots and pans hang on hooks in dark restaurants. The past year has seen businesses across numerous industries shutter, open with restrictions, then sometimes close again for good as nations navigate the global health crisis. A central question on marketers’ minds throughout it all is this: How many changes in consumer behavior will turn into habit, and how many will subside as soon as Covid-19 does? Knowing what will last helps determine where to allocate advertising dollars. While the answer, like any prediction, might be elusive, a good place to start is the household. Since the virus outbreak, governments have closed everything from offices to schools to restaurants, forcing people to restructure their…

Historically, crises for consumer-facing businesses were limited to fires and robberies, or perhaps the moral failing of an executive. The pandemic, however, challenged companies in ways no crisis has, widening the aperture on not only how businesses respond but also the types of disasters they can expect to face. Crisis management handbooks provide some foundation regardless of the scenario, but there was no guide for handling a pandemic before last year, pointed out Brian Harper, CEO of RPT Realty, an operator of open-air shopping centers. Companies had to find long-term solutions to unprecedented challenges both far-reaching and niche. In the process, brands changed the playbook for handling crises going forward, focusing their efforts on three pillars: humanity, liquidity and innovation. Humanity A company’s ability to communicate effectively and empathetically will…

When the Burger King people changed their logo, they were ready for some protests. Not a storm of outrage. At first, it does seam outrageous. Why change a good logo? A magnificent example of late 90’s graphic design. Dynamic shapes and bright colors that seemed to come out of FreeHand 8.0 effects toolbar. “It’s a wonder they kept some of what we recognize about Burger King.” muttered one fan. True, the new logo is inspired by the classic brand identities from 1969 to 1998. Still iconic. Still loved. Still Burger King. Most important, the ingredients inside the loved Whopper are better. Way better. Not one suspicious, weird named ingredient. Just deliciously fresh, flame-grilled goodness. Then why change the whole look? Why new colors and elements? Because we live in an…

WHERE WE WERE As 2020 began, the television industry was focused on launching new streaming services to keep pace with Netflix while simultaneously trying to stop audiences from abandoning linear TV. A year later, everything has been transformed as a result of Covid-19. And yet, at the same time, nothing has really changed. Yes, the pandemic supercharged and compressed the industry’s evolution from several years into a few short months. But 2021 kicks off in a similar way as 2020 did: Those same companies are prioritizing their streaming services, in part to grab the audiences that fled linear TV during the pandemic. Initially, quarantining consumers watched more TV throughout multiple dayparts, but those new patterns changed as Covid-19 shut down live sports and paused television production. That throttled the linear…

WHERE WE WERE Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Google rocked the ad-tech world when it confirmed it would drop support for third-party cookies, the common currency for programmatic trading, in its Chrome web browser in 2022. After Adweek first reported that Google was contemplating the changes in March 2019, imitating policies in Apple’s Safari, the industry went into a state of what Ratko Vidakovic, founder of consultancy firm AdProfs, calls “systemic flux.” This prompted a raft of ID initiatives from multiple vendors that wanted to continue online ad targeting independent of third-party cookies. The Trade Desk, the largest independent ad-tech company outside of Big Tech, emerged as a market leader, helping drive adoption of the Unified ID 2.0 offering, the most successful of these initiatives in gaining popular support from…

WHERE WE WERE Despite the advertising industry’s love of embracing technology, there’s one thing that really hasn’t changed in decades: how ads get shot. Oh sure, the process of filming a spot became more digital and higher-definition over the years, but if you time-traveled from a shoot in 1989 to a shoot in 2019, you’d probably be able to jump right in without much disorientation. Then came 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic brought global ad production to a grinding halt and forced the marketing triumvirate of agencies, clients and production to rewrite all the rules for how work can be produced. Now, as the ad industry looks ahead to a post-pandemic future, the question is not whether anything has changed. The question is if everything has changed. WHERE WE ARE NOW…

NOW YOU SEE IT… In a new music video for Spanish-language artist Giovanny Ayala, the Tecate product placement is hard to miss. But the cans weren’t there just hours before the video went live. The brand integration is the work of Mirriad, a production firm that uses AI computer vision to weave products and background ads seamlessly into TV shows, movies and other video content. It’s one of a handful of companies championing this new blueprint for dynamic product placement. The ultimate vision is a system in which product placement is sold more like digital advertising, with the ability to add or switch out brands.…

Last year, change was thrust upon agencies. While shops grappled with a suddenly remote workforce, clients were pulling or pausing ad spend while asking agencies to reconfigure campaigns and messaging to ensure relevance. Change will come this year, of course. But it will be more purposeful, as agencies, armed with learnings from 2020, double down on providing value to marketers. “This next year is going to be about clients getting real about growth and agencies getting real about what that takes,” said John Harris, CEO of Worldwide Partners, a network of more than 70 independent agencies. According to Harris, a recent study found a third of members are introducing new models for working with clients, while 42% identified creating a new agency model as the primary post-pandemic challenge. While approaches…

As the Covid-19 pandemic transformed nearly every aspect of home and work life, people turned to previously niche or unnecessary technologies in the past year. Tools ranging from voice-enabled devices to augmented reality saw a surge of adoption in 2020. But with widespread vaccination finally on the horizon, companies now find themselves trying to predict which technologies will be left in the lockdown era and which will become permanent fixtures. “People may drift away from these technologies, but now that they see the value in it [and] they understand at this moment how it has benefited them, I think they’ll definitely use them more in the long run,” Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen said. Brands that get the calculation right have a chance at millions in revenue from untapped markets in…

WHERE WE WERE Last year started off with publishers in a quandary about how to maintain their programmatic advertising businesses beyond 2022, when Google would end its support of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. But by March, as a pandemic hit, publishers had to deal with the fallout, including a volatile ad market, adverse keyword blocking, shortened sales cycles, disappearing revenue lines, vendors defaulting on payment terms and challenged commerce supply chains. This list of existential threats only added to the ongoing pressures of increased privacy regulation and browsers tightly controlling media companies’ ability to effectively monetize their audiences. But publishers’ knack for adapting proved invaluable. Under these turbulent conditions, media companies rolled out virtual events, dropped subscription paywalls and coaxed advertising budgets back through close ties with ad…

50,000 Projected agency jobs lost by the end of 2021. DO MARKETERS EXPECT SPENDING TO INCREASE OR DECLINE IN 2021? SOURCE: RSW/US Percentage of marketers and agencies that expect digital marketing spending to increase in 2021. ▴ 70% MARKETERS ▴ 90% AGENCIES SOURCE: RSW/US ‘ECOMMERCE CONSULTING AND ACTIVATION IS LESS THAN 3% OF AGENCY HOLDING COMPANY REVENUE. IT NEEDS TO BECOME 30% IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS.’ GREG PAULL, PRINCIPAL AT R3 70% Percentage of agencies and marketers that think virtual conferences are here to stay. SOURCE: RSW/US…

If you had to pick any place in America to own a condo, you could do much worse than Breckenridge, Colo. The ski resort town at the base of the Rockies has a population under 5,000 and a median income of around $86,500. A four-bedroom condo in this snowy aerie recently listed for $2.4 million. Twenty-five years ago, a gentleman by the name of David Clouse was lucky to own a condo here. But Clouse had a problem. When he wasn’t in the residence, the place was simply an expense. Clouse could have rented his condo by doing what everyone else did in 1995: listing it in the classified section of the newspaper. But, instead, he turned to what people were calling the World Wide Web. As it turned out,…