Sixty-nine percent of marketers have moved their programmatic media-buying all or partly in-house, but the reasons for doing so vary greatly by market, according to findings of the IAB's just-released "International Report On Programmatic In-Housing." The report, conducted in conjunction with Accenture Interactive and based on a survey of marketers in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, finds that "campaign effectiveness" is a top factor for all regions, but in the U.S."ROI attribution" stands out as the biggest factor by a margin of more than two-to-one over every other market.

GroupM's Mindshare unit had the best first half of 2020, increasing its revenue by $52.2 million over the same period a year ago, according to estimates released today by consultant R3 Worldwide. Omnicom's OMD ranked second, generating $45.5 million in revenue gains for what arguably has been the most challenging first half in recent memory, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brand spending -- both ad buys and sponsorships -- for esports is projected to rise from $279 million in 2016 to $1.1 billion in 2022, according to a forecast published as part of the just-released "Ad Opportunities In Gaming" report from WARC.

When live sports events were suspended in late February due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, it contributed to a seesaw effect that drove traffic down to sports-related sites, but also contributed to a surge in traffic to online gaming and esports sites. That's one of the findings from Comscore's just released "State Of Gaming" report.

American parents are facing a paradox when it comes to the amount of time their children spend on digital media screens. On the one hand, 71% of U.S. parents say they are concerned (31% "very) about the amount of time their children spend on screens. On the other hand, they are giving their kids access -- and even purchasing them their own smartphones -- at increasingly younger ages, according to findings of a comprehensive study conducted by the Pew Research Center and Ipsos.

The world's ad economy will decline more than 6%, while the U.S. ad market will slide nearly 4%, according to a revised consensus outlook of Madison Avenue's leading forecasters. The revised outlook incorporates Zenith Media's release this morning of its updated global and U.S. ad projections for 2020, revising its previous estimates set in December 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the advertising marketplace.

Nielsen recently announced it is delaying plans to incorporate out-of-home viewing into its regular ratings reports, which had been scheduled to start with the upcoming fall TV season. There was an immediate backlash from the broadcast networks, and Nielsen quickly reversed itself. It is now going to include this data starting in September 2020 as originally planned. The real headline should not be "Backlash From Networks Causes Nielsen to Reverse Itself," but rather, "Paying For Phantom Viewers - Why Is There No Backlash From Advertisers?" Read this week's edition to find out why.

Only 15.2% of international marketers expect to return to regular office workdays following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to findings of a survey fielded last month by The Internationalist magazine. The vast majority (95.6%) said they plan to work more remotely in the future, and (69.5%) said their main offices would become periodic meeting places.

The pandemic gods giveth, and they taketh away. That seems to be what has happened to TV viewing levels in recent weeks, according a UBS analysis of Nielsen trend data. Household and persons using TV levels spiked at the height of stay-at-home restrictions beginning in early March, but began stabilizing in May and are now trending below the pre-COVID-19 levels, raising questions for both TV and society-at-large.

Political ad spending is proving to be a boom for broadcasters, taking an 80% share of campaign spending to date, according to an update released by Advertising Analytics. Republicans have concentrated their cable TV spending on one network -- Fox News -- which has taken nearly half (47%) of all Republican cable TV ad dollars to date.