JOE MANDESE

Articles by Joe All articles by Joe

• NBCU Wraps Upfront: Broadcast Dayparts Rose 15%, Peacock Jumped 20% in MediaDailyNews on 07/15/2025
  

  NBCU said it has wrapped up its 2025-26 upfront sales season, omitting a discrete figure for the traditional prime-time daypart, but claiming a 15% increase for all broadcast dayparts, and touting other discrete, but high-growth categories such as sports (+45%), net sales from new small and medium-sized businesses (+30%), and streaming service Peacock (+20%). The latter which now accounts for a third of the parent company's total 2025-26 upfront sales volume.

• Its Master's Voice in Red, White & Blog on 07/15/2025
  

  Trump barked "stop," and Fox News Channel listened. So did most of the rest of MAGA media.

• Is That A Hotdog On NYC's Subway Map Or Are You Just Glad To See Some Mustard? in MediaDailyNews on 07/14/2025
  

  Either way, the team at Omnicom's adam&eveDDB are spreading the condiment to promote client Nathan's Famous in celebration of National Hotdog Day.

• The American Dream 2.0 in Red, White & Blog on 07/14/2025
  

  As part of its ongoing research into the "New America," Ipsos has just released a report on the "American Dream" -- past, present and future. Hint: Its meaning is in the eye of the beholder.

• 3.know: A Conversation With Singularity U's Venus Ranieri in Media 3.0 on 07/14/2025
  

  Thanks to the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, interest in the Singularity is rising, which is why this week's "Media 3.0" features a conversation with Singularity University's chief marketer Venus Ranieri, who explains, it's mission is not just helping people and companies understand the role of AI, but a host of new and emerging "exponential technologies."

• The Backside... in Red, White & Blog on 07/11/2025
  

  John Barron, John Baron, John Miller, Carolin Gallego, David Dennison, John T. Thornton, @barronjohn1946, Individual-1, Codename "Mogul," POTUS, Very Stable Genius, Legitimate Person, "I Alone" Fixer, Really Rich Guy, Like a Smart Person, Best Negotiator, Very Good Brain, Coy Rohn, Day One Dictator, Putin's Puppet, President Pinocchio, King Donalds, A Winner, The Best, Tiny Hands...

• Stagwell Centralizes Media, Taps Assembly's Adams To Lead New 'Agentic' Platform in MediaDailyNews on 07/09/2025
  

  Adams will be joined by Marissa Jimenez, who joins from Dentsu to serve on the new Stagwell Media Platform. He also continues as Assembly Global COO.

• WPP Shares Tumble On 'Uncertain' First-Half Investor Update in MediaDailyNews on 07/09/2025
  

  WPP's stock tumbled in intraday trading Wednesday morning after the agency holding company reported "tougher macro" conditions and "weaker new business conditions" in its first-half update to investors.

• Need To Bone Up On Digital Out-of-Home Measurement? Try The IAB in Planning & Buying Insider on 07/14/2025
  

  Its just-released "Digital Out-of-Home Measurement Guide" provides a comprehensive grounding for anyone interested in how the medium can and should be measured, both quantitatively, as well as qualitatively.

• 3.know: Grok Explains Humanity's Last Exam, Its Relevance To Ad Pros in Media 3.0 on 07/08/2025
  

  A grade of 45 might not seem gold star-worthy by old school human standards, but that's how Grok chose to illustrate this column when I interviewed it about rumors that soon-to-be released Grok 4 scored as high as 45% on Humanity's Last Exam (HLE), which is a super complex, mathematically-oriented test for measuring the intelligence of AIs.

Comments by Joe All comments by Joe

• Dickishness 2.0 by Joe Mandese (Red, White & Blog on 07/03/2025)
  

  @Mark Sutton: I've removed your comments about my mother both here an in another post. Please refrain from doing so again.

• Good Night CBS News, And Good Luck by Joe Mandese (Red, White & Blog on 07/02/2025)
  

  @Mark Sutton: Like your comment on another recent "Red, White & Blog," this one has nothing to do with this my post and is just a talking point. There is no record of Zohran Mamdani "terrorizing" Jews innl NYC. Why are you spreading something terrible like that?What Zohran Mamdani has actually said about Jews and Israel | The Jerusalem Post https://share.google/W5BWMmbgrymuTpgGc

• Dickishness 2.0 by Joe Mandese (Red, White & Blog on 07/03/2025)
  

  @Mark Sutton: Not that it has anything to do with this "Red, White & Blog," but just fact-checking your assertion about Zohran Mamdani: it's just a talking point and there is no record of him exhorting physical harm against Jews.What Zohran Mamdani has actually said about Jews and Israel | The Jerusalem Post https://share.google/W5BWMmbgrymuTpgGc

• Good Night CBS News, And Good Luck by Joe Mandese (Red, White & Blog on 07/02/2025)
  

  @Frank Lampe: Ironically, a division of Parmount (Comedy Central's "The Daily Show") already made that donation during Trump's first term:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0uLjRAHJkU

• Ad Market Remains Tepid, Expands 4.4% In May by Joe Mandese (MediaDailyNews on 06/30/2025)
  

  @DJ Condon: That's because Guideline continuously updates each month's index based on real-time reconcilations. Usually, it only impacts the most recent month/s. We explained that methodology here: when Guideline began providing that data.https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/368000/ad-economy-rose-102-in-september-expansion-cont.htmlSo each month's column is accurate based on an analysis of the most current view of the data. Normally, there's not that much of a variance.

• Ad Market Remains Tepid, Expands 4.4% In May by Joe Mandese (MediaDailyNews on 06/30/2025)
  

  @Gordon Borrell: Tepid in the context of monthly year-over-year expansion and in terms of being in line with a series of 2025 forecast downgrades by the major agency holding company forecasting teams.

• House Judiciary Report Alleges GARM Colluded With Foreign Governments by Wendy Davis and Joe Mandese (MediaDailyNews on 06/27/2025)
  

  @Thomas Siebert from Benevolent Propadanda: Speaking of suppressing free speech, so you believe it's okay for a goverment to constrain the free speech of private companies to place their ads on media they deem safe and appropriate for their brands?

• Madison Avenue's Big Law Moment by Joe Mandese (Red, White & Blog on 06/25/2025)
  

  @Ed Papazian: It's not 100% clear, because much of the media-buying done by the holdcos these days is not as an agent, but as a principal (meaning the agency is actually the media-buying client). Interpublic had been pushing aggressively in the direction of principal buying prior to the Omnicom merger announcement, and CEO Philippe Krakowsky recently disclosed that half its clients opt for a principal buying arrangement now:https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/403727/krakowsky-half-of-ipg-clients-opt-in-to-princip.html

• Dentsu Begins Using Bots To Synthesize People For Planning & Buying by Joe Mandese (Planning & Buying Insider on 06/17/2025)
  

  @Ed Papazian: You were ahead of your times. I think the difference is it's not a model, but synthetic respondents responding as if they were actual people. I'm not sure it's necessarily better, but from everything I've ever heard of -- and reported on -- vis a vis human respondent bias, I'm not sure it's any worse either.

• Dentsu Begins Using Bots To Synthesize People For Planning & Buying by Joe Mandese (Planning & Buying Insider on 06/17/2025)
  

  @Ed Papazian: That is actually how it works. I'm no expert on how you do that, but I asked one -- ChatGPT -- and here's what it said:Creating a synthetic respondent for a consumer survey involves generating a simulated persona or dataset that mirrors the characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of a real consumer—without actually surveying a real individual. This can be useful for modeling, testing, hypothesis development, or scaling insights when real data is limited. Here's a step-by-step overview of how to do it: 1. Define the PurposeClarify why you're using synthetic respondents. Common use cases include:Testing survey designModeling market segmentsSimulating future scenariosRunning pre-research experiments 2. Build or Acquire a Foundational DatasetYou need a basis for realism. Sources can include:Actual survey dataPublic datasets (e.g., census, Pew Research, Nielsen)CRM or digital behavior dataMarket research reports 3. Identify Key VariablesDecide which attributes your synthetic respondent needs to emulate. These typically include:Demographics: age, gender, income, education, locationPsychographics: values, attitudes, interestsBehavioral: purchase habits, media usage, brand preferencesSituational: employment, family status, device ownership 4. Generate the Respondents (Methods)There are multiple approaches depending on the fidelity you want:A. Rule-Based GenerationUse if you want control or simplicity.Create profiles manually or with logic rulesE.g., "A 35-year-old urban mom likely shops online weekly and values convenience."B. Statistical Modeling / SimulationUse probabilistic sampling from real distributions.Techniques: Monte Carlo simulation, Bayesian modeling, bootstrappingHelps generate statistically valid synthetic populationsC. Machine Learning-Based GenerationUse when you have enough real data.Clustering (e.g., K-means): to generate personas from real data clustersGenerative models (e.g., GANs, VAEs): to synthesize data matching real distributionsCan be refined with techniques like SMOTE for balancing attributesD. Language Models (LLMs)Use when you're simulating open-ended responses or behavior narratives.Prompt an LLM (like GPT-4) with a persona and a question:"You are a 42-year-old suburban dad who drives a hybrid and cares about sustainability. How do you decide which cereal to buy?"This is useful for qualitative survey pre-testing or ethnographic simulation

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