Curated Guide to Research
MediaPost's comprehensive guide to current research in the marketplace.
- The Big 3 holding company forecast units have significantly upgraded their outlooks for U.S. and worldwide ad spending in 2020 and 2021 in new year-end forecasts released today. WPP's GroupM published the greatest upward revision, improving its 2020 global at outlook by 6.1 percentage points from -11.8% projected in its mid-year outlook published in June to -4.1% currently.
- President Donald Trump's brand has declined in added advertising value among some major Trump-centric category brands, according to Brand Keys, but TV and entertainment has climbed dramatically.
- The number of ad commercial messages is flat for the week of Nov. 16-22 vs. the same week the year before for total TV ad occurrences in the top categories of automotive, insurance, pharmaceutical, restaurants and retail. Retail has made recent improvements, down 34% in September, and 23% for October. Walmart, Target, and Macy's saw increases of 13%, 17% and 17% for the week ending Nov. 22 vs. a year ago, while Home Depot and Lowe's are down 36% and 13%, respectively.
- The global and U.S. ad outlook has improved markedly from earlier this year, according to revised year-end forecasts released by Madison Avenue's Big 3 ad forecasting units. The worldwide consensus of WPP's GroupM, IPG Mediabrands' Magna, and Publicis' Zenith improved 4.1 percentage points for 2020 and 1.1 points for 2021.
- On average, adding CTV to desktop and mobile drove a 149.6% lift in brand awareness versus desktop and mobile alone; a 36.9% lift in brand opinion; and a 24.8% lift in purchase intent.
- Respondents operating in an ecosystem prioritizing privacy, data control, transparency and accountability provided higher-quality data.
- As marketplaces like Amazon see dramatic growth, one wants advertisers to take advantage of behavioral data from a variety of actions to support a range of media buys.
- With polls in the spotlight again this election year an ARF event brought together a group of experts to consider the predictive accuracy of different methods of political and business forecasting.
- Discovery+ could see $600 million in annual revenue its first year, Macquarie Research estimates. The question is whether it can compete with other major media company streaming services.
- SEMrush's report analyzes data on Google, Twitter and other platforms as well as visits, backlinks and social shares and the correlation between metrics and elements such as text length, headlines, structure, the presence of visuals, the price of terms and the perfect length for descriptions.
- Based on its most recent trending data, including the month of March, the U.S. ad market is pacing to end on a positive note heading into Q4, according to a year-end 2020 analysis published by Standard Media Index.
- Ad spending in 2021 will be lower than 2019, when an estimated total $161 billion was spent, BIA Advisory Services says. Total U.S. local advertising this year is projected to be down 17% from 2019, to a total $134.1 billion. BIA says it does not expect a full recovery until 2022.
- "DoubleClick Search" saw a significant uptick among brands, signaling rising marketer interest around search marketing overall.
- Consumers changed their plans from August to November, AKi Technologies reports.
- While America's obsession with reality TV may go back decades, our beloved national fixation undoubtedly has intensified since March, climbing by 6.5 billion minutes. Where did these additional viewers come from?
- Anyone in advertising and marketing who hasn't been asleep for the past decade has to know what a LUMAscape is -- the cleverly delineated flowcharts mapping, and categorizing the players in key digital media "ecosystems" -- created by the team at Luma Partners. They have inspired countless others to do the same within their areas of media expertise, and now, courtesy of Magellan AI, there's a "Podscape" doing the same to organize the burgeoning marketplace of podcasting.
- GroupM dramatically improved the outlook for the U.S. ad economy in 2020, and revised its 2021 outlook from negative to a positive gain in its just-released year-end forecast. GroupM now projects the U.S. ad economy will contract only 3.9% -- about half the 7.6% decline it projected when it published its mid-year outlook in June. For 2021, the U.S. ad economy is now projected to expand 6.2% vs. a previously forecasted decline of 1.7%.
- Viamedia has promoted David Solomon to president and CEO, replacing Lieberman, who will remain as a director on Viamedia's board.
- Daytime TV viewing has become a "second prime time," according to Nielsen, due to the continued growth of kids viewing and at-home workers' TV and internet consumption.
- Authenticity is the biggest driver of engagement, followed by personalization, Gatepoint Research reports.
- Pre-pandemic familiarity was definitely a factor, with 71% choosing auto brands they have bought before, according to Invoca.
- Spurred by Zoom's removal of data limits across its platform on Thanksgiving Day, U.S. broadband usage surged vs. Thanksgiving 2019, according to estimates released today by OpenVault.
- Moldafsky will be responsible for all marketing including global brand strategy and management, product marketing, media, research and analytics, meetings, events and sponsorships and reputation.
- Worldwide linear TV advertising is expected to fall 16% -- $29.9 billion -- to $155.6 billion, the worst decline on record, according to WARC, the ad and marketing research company.
- The October lead-in to the election should have been a period of intense audience interest for major conservative news sites, yet many of the biggest experienced significant audience erosion vs. October 2019, according to an analysis of Comscore data by TheRighting.
- Discounts reign as consumers' online spending sees double-digit growth, Adobe Analytics data shows.
- U.S. ad demand rose for the third consecutive month in October, albeit at its smallest rate -- just 0.7% -- since the U.S. ad economy began recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The top 10 ad categories drove the growth, while all others declined in aggregate.
- Democrats were more likely than Republicans to express satisfaction with the traditional news media. Only 9% looked at a social network feed.
- Warner Music Group posted slightly higher revenues in Q4, reversing declines in its fiscal Q2 and Q3 2020 periods -- boosted by sharply higher digital revenues of 15%.
- Ad-supported and CTV platforms will see the biggest growth, with a 31% improvement to $4.2 billion, while local TV stations will see positive growth of 8.3% to $22.4 billion. The improvement has been driven by strong political activity, rescheduling of major sports in Q3 and the return of scripted TV programming in Q4, according to MoffettNathanson Research.
