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One More Day of Election Advertising |
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Hello CMOs. This is CMO Today editor Nat Ives, filling in for Lara while she heads to this week’s Web Summit in Lisbon. If you’re there, catch her tomorrow at 1:45 p.m. on the PandaConf stage, where she'll discuss how marketers sell their brands internally with IBM CMO Michelle Peluso and SAP CMO Alicia Tillman.
Here in the United States, there’s one day left until the midterm elections, and campaign ads are flooding TV, radio and Facebook. Some of them are so nasty and misleading—we’re looking at you, New Jersey, but not just you—that it’s easy to forget that time when Democrats and Republicans in Congress worked together to make campaign advertising civil and fair. In 2002, they passed the “Stand by Your Ad” provision as part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, forcing every candidate for public office since to declare in their commercials, “I’m [your candidate] and I approve this message.”
The idea was that “a mix of shame and self-preservation would make candidates less inclined to put out ads that were false or just plain ugly,” Jim Rutenberg recalls in The New York Times. That notion now looks “adorable,” he says.
Indeed. One way or another, we’re looking forward to Wednesday.
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PHOTO: CARL COURT/GETTY IMAGES
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Snap Inc. has faced criticism from media buyers hungry for audited information about its audiences. Now video publishers in Snapchat’s Discover section are about to get more credit for their viewers there, Benjamin Mullin reports for CMO Today—though we’ll still have to wait for outside numbers on specific shows.
A new deal with Comscore will let the measurement company add Snapchat Discover viewership to the aggregate audience totals that Comscore reports for publishers. Snap already provides internal numbers to publishers, but it’s the first time Snapchat Discover audiences will be measured by an outside company.
Buyers said they’re interested, if far from satiated. “In the short term, it’s always good to see more traction towards third-party measurement, even when it’s a smaller step,” said Jessica Prassel, U.S. social practice lead for Mindshare North America. “What we would really like to see with Snap in the long-term is more specific third-party breakdowns of audience and engagement.”
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| The Press Release They Didn’t Send |
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Michael Roth, CEO of Interpublic Group. PHOTO: SEBASTIEN NOGIER/REUTERS
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After Interpublic Group announced its deal last July to buy Acxiom Marketing Solutions for $2.3 billion, a huge bid to better serve marketers using data, executives at rivals said they hadn’t missed out—they didn’t want to own Acxiom in the first place. Omnicom Group would rather rent the kind of consumer data Acxiom handles than buy “the company the compiles the data,” Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson said. Publicis Groupe preferred to remain “data agnostic” by using “the best data sources available around the world,” Publicis Media CEO Steve King said.
In a new profile, Interpublic CEO Michael Roth says the company would have said the same things. “I’m not kidding,” Roth told Ad Age. “We actually had a press release on it. Because if we didn't get it, everyone was going to say, 'How come they got it and you didn't?'"
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God-is Rivera. PHOTO PROVIDED BY SUBJECT
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Marketers trying to reach devoted communities on social media fear making a wrong step because the blowback can be deafening. In a move intended partly to help, Twitter has hired the well-known ad-agency executive God-is Rivera for a newly created post, global director of culture and community. In her new role, Rivera will assist advertisers as they connect with the various informal groups that have coalesced on Twitter. But she’ll also amplify the groups' voices in Twitter’s own company culture, products, events and marketing.
“It’s this idea of representation,” Ms. Rivera, who had been director of inclusion and cultural resonance at WPP’s VMLY&R, told me for CMO Today. “It matters.”
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“I want you to know that I am ashamed that my network aired this disgusting racist ad. It is the antithesis of everything I personally believe in, and what, I believe, our show is all about.”
| — “Will & Grace” star Debra Messing on an immigration-themed commercial approved by President Trump that aired during “Sunday Night Football” on NBC. CNN previously declined to accept a version of the spot, declaring it “racist.” |
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Amazon stepped up its battle against Walmart and Target on Monday by offering free shipping on all orders for the holidays, with no minimum order or Prime club membership required. [Reuters]
Ratings for the first half of the NFL’s regular season have held the line following an ominous 9% audience decline last season. [Ad Age]
WPP has frozen hiring until the end of the first quarter in a self-described “urgent action” to deal with a slowdown in its business, putting on ice an estimated 2,000 potential hires. [Bloomberg News]
Serena Williams is going beyond celebrity endorsements with activism and investments. [Adweek]
Moviegoers who show up early for “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” Walt Disney Co.’s sequel to “Wreck-It Ralph,” will be able to play an augmented-reality game tie-in courtesy of in-theater ad company National Cinemedia. [Marketing Land]
Tencent is introducing sunglasses that record video, reminiscent of Snapchat Spectacles, in a bid to boost its standing in China’s booming market for short video. [The Drum]
CNN's latest ad in its “Facts First” marketing campaign visualizes a world where “lies become truth.” [CNN via Twitter]
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