Marketers, on average, have saved 25 hours of labor time weekly by utilizing various forms of automation technology. That's more than any other industry professionals surveyed by Zapier in June, though it didn't survey ad agency executives explicitly. In terms of what areas of marketing workflow have been most impacted by the automation time savings, "team communication" ranked first (with 46% of respondents citing it), followed by identifying and targeting consumers (42%), and email scheduling (39%). Interestingly, programmatic media-buying, dynamic content optimization and other automation topics that are big on Madison Avenue, didn't rank in the survey results.

Cinema advertising -- the hardest hit during the 2020 COVID-19 ad recession, plummeting 72% from 2019 -- will be the fastest-growing this year, according to just-released updated figures from Publicis Media's Zenith forecasting unit. With a projected 116% expansion in 2021, Zenith now projects cinema advertising will more than make up for its 2020 loses, and will now post incremental gains over 2019, too.

In this week's edition, I make the case why "Evil," which premiered on CBS in September 2019, is one of the best shows currently on TV. While it was the network's best new show of the year, it unfortunately was not one of its most-watched. In fact, for the full 2019-20 season, it was one of CBS's lowest rated series, and a prime candidate for cancellation. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, delaying production schedules for virtually all networks and platforms, and throwing the 2020-21 season into chaos. While Netflix had more shows in the pipeline than most, it still needed …

Thanks to highly contested state and local races for the U.S. Senate, house and governor seats, the 2022 U.S. political advertising cycle will approach the $9.02 billion set during the 2020 election cycle, which included the presidential election too, according to just-released projections from AdImpact. The main beneficiary will be broadcast TV, which will actually surpass 2020 spending levels, though cable TV, CTV, radio and digital will all benefit at near record levels too (see chart below).

Many of the ad industry's biggest media suppliers increasingly are deemed a "priority buy" by U.S. ad executives, according to findings of a new "reputation report" of big media suppliers released today by Advertiser Perceptions. The study shows that Amazon has ranked as the No. 1 priority among the greatest percentage of respondents at least since February 2020 when Advertiser Perceptions benchmarked the question, and it has consistently risen in the two studies that have followed it with more than half of all ad execs deeming it a priority buy.

As a result of so many programs on so many platforms, and the fact that everybody doesn't have access to everything anymore, television viewing has become much more splintered than even just a few years ago. So, it is possible, even likely, that any list of "best" TV shows will have several that many readers have not seen, or perhaps even heard of. If you are among those who have not yet discovered Amazon original series "Bosch," you are missing out on one of the very best series on any platform. The seventh season dropped this June, and there are …

Thanks in part to surging demand for prime-time network TV advertising inventory in the recently concluded 2021-22 broadcast upfront, the average prime-time CPM (cost-per-thousand) for cable TV networks fell to less than half of the broadcast networks for the first time in recent history.

Dentsu today significantly upgraded its ad spending growth estimates, but not all media are moving in a positive direction. While the worldwide ad growth outlooks have improved for digital, linear TV, radio and print media vs. what Dentsu has previously forecasted in January, out-of-home and cinema ad spending now are expected to see slower growth this year.

Exactly how bad was the 2020 global ad recession for key ad category growth? According to Dentsu's revised ad outlook, it various by category, but all are back into positive growth in 2021, albeit many on a deflated base. Roughly half of the top 12 categories will still be under water relative to their 2019 pre-pandemic baselines, including automotive, retail, media/entertainment, and travel, the worst hit of all the majors.

Over the past month or so, the trade press -- including MediaPost -- reported how the major broadcast networks have completed "record" and/or "best ever" upfront advertising sales for the 2021-22 broadcast season. While that may or may not comes as a positive leading indicator for Madison Avenue's ad spending recovering coming out of the COVID-19 ad recession (and one of the worst upfronts ever last year), a new analysis from GroupM Business Intelligence chief Brian Wieser suggests upfront ad spending volume claims may not be as representative of actual full-year network TV ad billings as some might think.