Table of contents for September 5, 2016 in Adweek

McDonald’s decision to leave Leo Burnett and consolidate its nearly $1 billion U.S. advertising business with Omnicom marked the end of one of the industry’s most watched and most contentious reviews. It also served as the most significant win to date for Wendy Clark, who left Coca-Cola to become CEO of DDB North America last January. Clark will lead a unit that both Omnicom and the fast-food chain hope will become a new model for agency/client relationships. The phrase “Agency of the Future” has a storied history, but Clark explained the McDonald’s brief began with that premise. “Envision a 200-person agency that has capabilities ranging from marketing to strategy, data, content creation of all kinds and an in-house studio, all in one place,” she said. “It can create anything from…

Unsubscribe is our favorite toggle in our inbox. Skip, our favorite prompt when viewing online videos. Block, our go-to option for internet browsing. Why? Because advertising’s relationship with the consumer is fundamentally broken. Evidence of this is everywhere. We can see it in the frustration of consumers who feel barraged with meaningless content, their privacy under siege. We see it in the epidemic of ad blocking—the use of ad blocking software has more than doubled since 2014, and 92 percent of internet users said that they’d consider using an ad blocker. What’s worse is there’s been a breach of trust between advertisers and the public. In a poll recently commissioned by Consumer Watchdog, 80 percent of Americans wanted to opt out of online tracking altogether and even wanted a “do-not-track-me”…

The major digital media platforms—full of big gains, big hype and often a lack of transparency—have made the advertising universe a complicated, fragmented place. And with eMarketer predicting digital ad spending to swell to $77.4 billion in 2017, up 16 percent versus this year, it’s a domain that’s poised to evolve even more rapidly. We asked seven ad buyers—from three consumer brands and three agencies, plus one independent—to talk about what’s right and what’s wrong with a dozen platforms with which they do business. “The definitions are different for YouTube, for Facebook, for Twitter, and that is really not user-friendly for any agency or for any brand to work across all of them for proper reporting,” says Liya Sharif, Qualcomm’s senior director, marketing. Adds Bruce Kiernan, practice lead for performance…

During CBS’ last earnings call in July, analysts who were expecting CBS Corp. CEO and chairman Leslie Moonves to do little more than brag about his network’s big upfront gains were in for a surprise. In addition to his upfront boasting, Moonves revealed that CBS All Access, CBS’ over the top streaming service, already has around 1 million subscribers paying $5.99 each. (He said Showtime’s stand-alone subscription service has a similar number.) That’s “well ahead of where we thought we’d be at this point in the game,” said Moonves. He wasn’t alone. “I don’t think there’s anyone who thought they had a million subscribers,” said BTIG Research media analyst Rich Greenfield. “Most people thought the number was far less than half of that.” Now CBS is hoping to push that…

THE BRAND Mead is one of many brands to make a marble notebook, whose design is largely unchanged since 1974. It remains a top seller for the company. THE SPINE Unlike spiral notebooks, marble composition books are sewn with white string, which keeps the pages from tearing loose and is a major selling point. THE RULE Grade-schoolers start out with wide ruled where the blue lines are about 9mm apart. The narrower college ruled is for older kids who’ve presumably learned penmanship. THE COVER A substitute for genuine marbled paper (which is fragile and costly), the “marble” covers are really just a black-and-white flecked pattern. As a mother, blogger and wife of a schoolteacher, Crystal Rapinchuk is busy this time of year, when over 50 million kids head back to…

What’s the first information you consume when you wake up in the morning? I usually read all my work emails and then I check Instagram and Snapchat. Then I go to Flipboard to read all of my news. It’s the easiest way to have everything that interests me in one app. Who do you follow on social media? I’ve always loved Rihanna’s Instagram. She always has really great posts. She’s beautiful. I love her attitude and her style. Also Britney Spears. And on Vine, I like Brittany Furlan. I think she’s really funny. Are you a big Vine user? I was when it first came out, but now there are so many different social media sites that it’s hard to keep up with all of them. I like Snapchat the…

‘Venture capitalists are pouring money into AI startups.’Jessica Peltz, partner, KBS Ventures The next time you see Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton with an unflattering look on her face in a TV spot supporting GOP rival Donald Trump, it’s all but certain you can attribute the ad creative to artificial intelligence. The Republican National Committee is using machine-learning software from Veritone, a 2-year-old player that just secured $50 million in funding. Designed to work with laser-fast precision, its audio-based system lets the RNC zip through all the publicly available times Clinton has spoken on TV, radio or online video to scoop up her angriest or oddest moments. Then, GOP staffers can cherry-pick images from a schadenfreude file. The company is about to add a visual-sentiment feature, which will zero in…

The brand safety role is a new one. Why did GroupM need to create this position? As opportunities with data and measurability and new efficiencies emerge in the digital supply chain, so does complexity. When there’s complexity, there are tons of intermediaries, and where there are tons of intermediaries, it makes things more complex. Inevitably there are risks that appear—not just fraud—but risks of are my ads being seen? Are my ads being placed in appropriate positions? Am I getting the right target audiences that I asked for? All of these potential risk areas emerge and whilst clients are moving funds from linear into digital, they are also saying we really want to make sure that our brands are safe, we’re getting what we asked for and that we enjoy…

Why is Facebook getting involved in ad blocking? We think it’s a really important consumer conversation that’s going on, and we looked at third-party research for why people install ad blockers, and the reason is around the user experience. The ads are interruptive or disruptive, they’re not quality and they slow things down a lot. So we looked at how we can create meaningful controls for people so that they can understand what we use to personalize ads to them. Ad preferences are not hidden or buried anywhere—every single ad that we show, you can see there’s a “Why am I seeing this?” link that takes you directly to the ad preferences. There’s been mixed reaction from agencies about serving ads to someone with a blocker turned on. What is…

Trntbl $351 Vinyl records are, by definition, a low-tech medium. But that doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from a few 21st century bells and whistles, according to the folks at record subscription service Vnyl. The company recently released its first record player, dubbed Trntbl (sense a trend here?), that wirelessly streams high-quality uncompressed audio to Bluetooth speakers, AirPlay-enabled devices or Sonos systems. Trntbl also brings a social component to the analog listening experience by using a Shazam-like technology and Spotify integration to automatically identify any song being played within the streaming service’s library, so you can share it with friends or add it to a playlist. Buy it: trntbl.co HOME Fresh Air Molekule Air Purifier $499 Most air purifiers filter out pollutants. Newcomer Molekule claims to eliminate them…

Until 1943, Paris was the fashion capital of the world where the best designers showed off their creations twice a year. But because of World War II and Paris’ Nazi occupation, global fashion editors and influencers couldn’t get to the shows. New York fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert—who would later go on to found the Council of Fashion Designers of America—saw this as an opportunity to show the world that American designers were worthy adversaries, and fashion week was born. But the fashion week known today didn’t take form until 1993. In fact, it wasn’t even branded until 2004 when Olympus came on as the first title sponsor three years after the event was sold by the CFDA to talent agency IMG. FACT From the mid’90s to 2001, NYFW was called…