WPP posted decent growth on second-quarter sales, "but the results were marred by the write-down of an investment in troubled measurement firm comScore," according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.  "First-half net profit fell 57% to £245.8 million as it booked £122 million of write-downs, primarily on its investment in comScore. The measurement firm has not released any financial statements related to its 2015 results, due to an internal investigation by its audit committee, WPP said. ComScore said Aug. 10 that it would be replacing its chief executive. That turmoil hasn’t deterred WPP from increasing its stake in …

In an interview on Beet.TV, Videology CEO Scott Ferber asks: “How do we get the one of linear TV plus the one of digital video together to make 1 to 1 as a value proposition to the advertiser?" While 77% of U.S. TV viewing still occurs on TV screens, the other 23% is expected to grow rapidly. As a result, “Both MVPD’s and publishers are experiencing consumption fragmentation,” Ferber said. This trend is spawning converged solutions from Videology and others to enable TV and video providers to offer advertisers cross-device campaign opportunities that are “measurable by television standards against the …

It's no secret that ad blockers have changed the way traditional publishers that rely largely on advertising approach monetization. More than three-quarters of U.S. publishers now use a mix of ad support and subscriptions, according to May 2016 research from AOL conducted by InsightsNow. The research found that just 11% of publishers reported relying solely on an ad-supported model, and that 78% use both ads and subscriptions. An April 2016 survey from Mixpo found that two-thirds of U.S. digital advertising professionals were extremely or very concerned about ad blocking, viewability, and attribution, among other issues.

According to research from Clutch in partnership with R2integrated, 75% of U.S. marketing practitioners said they used analytics-focused tools, among other CRM and social community management platforms. Coming in second was the use of customer relationship management software, at 62%, and No. 3 was social community management platforms. Notably, the research found that demand-side platforms or DSPs and data management platforms (DMPs) were the least used -- by 34% of those polled.

Wunderman last month said its APAC operations would be helmed by Xaxis EMEA CEO Caspar Schlickum. The Drum spoke with Schlickum about his thoughts on integrating creative and ad tech. “The more I speak to clients I think there's this really interesting opportunity around data and technology integration with creativity. ...So many brands are starting to ask questions. We are at the stage in using technology where it should be making you better marketer, not just a more effective advertiser or a slightly more efficient advertiser. How does it actually make brands money? How does it help me engage with …

The Trade Desk is ready for its public offering. Yes, the demand-side platform submitted its S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating plans to go public, Ad Exchanger reports. “The company hopes to raise $86.3 million in the offering, and management will maintain substantial control of the company,” it writes.

Scott Braley, general manager of advertising platforms at Ooyala, writes in ExchangeWire that "SSPs are considered a necessary, and even vital, part of the digital ecosystem, providing a valuable link between publisher inventory and the DSPs and exchanges fielding its demand, allowing publishers to achieve maximum yield." However, he argues that there’s no real reason why publishers can’t access that demand directly. Braley believes the stand-alone SSP is dead and writes: "Looking at the ad tech landscape, I cannot help but be struck by the number of dubious companies vying for a cut of the marketing dollars publishers are trying …

The Drum takes a look at header bidding, which it says has "proven to be one of the key areas of debate in the ad tech space this year, having been pushed heavily by prominent ad tech vendors, including AppNexus and Rubicon Project to name a few." But, it reports, "the momentum of the technology was disrupted earlier this year by arguably its biggest detractor Google, with its announcement of the full rollout of its answer to header bidding -- DoubleClick iFirst Look -- a solution that is now available to publishers worldwide, as well as the trial of exchange …

Tim Whitfield, director of technical operations at GroupM, concludes his multi-part series on ad tech in LinkedIn with observations on Search and Social. Basically, he believes that programmatic bidding strategies need to automatically connect search data signals. For example, here's what Whitfield says needs to happen: All types of biddable data need to be integrated. "For instance, if somebody searches for "Travel to New York" in a search engine. This is a strong signal that that person is in the market to travel to New York. This data signal needs to available in all other programmatic media, especially in display …

More B2B marketers are using marketing analytics to improve return on investment and to more efficiently distribute their marketing dollars. Data from Regalix, which polled more than 500 B2B marketers globally, found that more than 60% said they'd experienced a sales increase of between 11% and 50% due to using marketing analytics. Using marketing analytics tools offers companies more visibility into their marketing spends, enabling them to allocate dollars to the highest-performing channels.