Connections Briefing

Led by the surging, double-digit growth rates of Accenture Interactive (+57%), Deloitte Digital (+14%), IBM Experience (+12.5%), and PWC (+32%), the advertising agency sector has grown 2016 revenues by 6.5% according to AdAge’s 2016 Agency Report published May 3, 2016.

Digital advertising rose to 41.3% of total U.S. agency revenues, confirming the prior prediction by the CMO Club that digital will exceed 50% market share by 2018 or sooner.  Technology consulting firms appear to be the biggest winners, as the 4 top global digital agency networks are units of technology consulting firms. However, the rising tide of digital advertising and technology insurgents appears to be raising the entire advertising and marketing services sector, as WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic are trading at record high share price levels.

[Read more…] about Tech Insurgents Lead 2016 Agency Growth

Happy Spring! Since this is a season of new beginnings, and new growth, we invite you to a discussion of one of the new frontiers. With Marketing tilting onto a digital- and mobile-first axis, one of the newest, hottest frontiers is Analytics-driven by Big Data and Machine Learning.

Boards are pushing CEOs to invest in advanced technologies to better analyze the wealth of customer, employee and business data already residing inside large, legacy databases.

We are placing a greater number of Chief Analytics Officers, and in partnership with CTOs and CFOs, these CAOs are being tasked to develop and apply advanced analytics to improve decision-making enterprise-wide. [Read more…] about The New Frontier of Analytics

In a recent AdAge article by Maureen Morrison, she highlighted according to EMarketer, 2016 will be the year mobile ad spending eclipses desktop ad spending. EMarketer goes on the project by 2019, mobile advertising will exceed $65B+ and will represent 70% of total digital ad spending and 30% of total media spending.

That’s quite a staggering and rapid growth rate and it underscores why Google (32% share) and Facebook (19% share), the 2 mobile advertising juggernauts, will continue to grow exponentially and become the largest and most profitable global digital media companies. This also explains why Apple and other mobile phone and device manufacturers are making screens larger; it’s because we are in a new era of mobile-first marketing, meaning consumers are seeking and accepting marketing messages real-time, including geo-targeting which is enabling marketers and brands to reach consumers in real time at (or near) the point of purchase. Mobile-first has enabled new promotion marketing, including instant in-store coupons, and real-time loyalty marketing incentives. And it’s still early days for mobile, with ad tech companies developing new ad formats, and marketers focused on delivering relevant, targeted content messages and ads/offers conducive to the smaller mobile screens (especially mobile phones).

[Read more…] about 2016 is the year of mobile!