POV: Advertising Week New York

Background:

Advertising Week (AW) New York took place from October 18-21. While last year’s event was all virtual, this year AW returned as a hybrid event. Attendees could join in-person at Hudson Yards, or watch from home. There were 800+ speakers and 450+ sessions; here were some of the key themes.

Details and Implications:

Data & privacy. With the coming cookie-less future, this is one of the biggest points of discussion for marketers overall right now, and AW was no exception. Sessions explored the implications for targeting and measurement alike, with speakers ranging from Nielsen to Conde Nast to Microsoft, LiveRamp, L’Oreal, and many more. From the Mindshare side, Mara Greenwald (Managing Director of our Shop+ capability) spoke at a session with IBM Watson and GlaxoSmithKline on the future of personalization and the role of AI—honing in on the importance of first-party data and insight-driven personalization (and being more critical with the data you’re testing, versus just personalization for its own sake). 

GroupM’s Krystal Olivieri (Global Chief Innovation Officer) also spoke on a panel with WPP’s Di Mayze (Global Head of Data and AI) on the impact of the sweeping changes in data privacy regulations, and how marketers must adjust how they leverage consumer data in order to drive strategy, define audiences, and plan media. Finally, Thursday also saw Snap release its third quarter earnings results—and attributing their revenue miss to Apple’s recent privacy changes with iOS 14.5. While not a session at AW, it was clearly a key piece of news and topic of conversation for attendees. 

Streaming & CTV. The growth of streaming and CTV offerings, and what Ad Age termed “the CTV buying surge,” was apparent in the wealth of sessions on this topic, with speakers from CBS, Disney, NBCU, Nielsen, Roku, Vizio, Warner Media, Yahoo, and more, in addition to brands such as Volkswagen, Anheuser-Busch, and Colgate-Palmolive. The big challenge for marketers here is measurement and targeting beyond just any one publisher’s ecosystem (a number of partners are doing that well), but better cross-platform measurement that prevents advertisers from accidentally reaching duplicate audiences (and bombarding the same people with too many of the same ads). As the number of cord-shavers, cord-cutters, and cord-nevers continues rising, it’s a task that’s only growing in importance. 

A couple other items of note in this space coming out of AW: Nielsen debuted a new logo and brand identity following the company’s recent challenges (the MRC had suspended their accreditation for national and local TV last month); Roku unveiled their first streaming project since the launch of Roku Brand Studio; YouTube announced live shopping and CTV product updates.  

Commerce. Speaking of live shopping, retail and ecommerce was naturally another key theme at AW. For those attending AW live, Snapchat took over Shake Shack’s Hudson Yards restaurant with an augmented reality shopping experience. Kroger announced a new private programmatic marketplace for its first-party data. Target’s Roundel led a panel with Kimberly-Clark, Criteo, and PepsiCo on how to put together winning full-funnel campaigns with retail media. TikTok talked about driving commerce on and off its platform—including the success of #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.  

Mindshare teams (including our Shop+ capability) have been working closely with clients to build and grow their commerce strategies, including research tracking consumer sentiment and behaviors around this space.    

DEI: AW had two content tracks related to this theme—one called DE&I, and one called Future is Female, not to mention DEI content in the Responsible Marketing track. Most notably, the “Diversity in Adland” panel revealed key findings in the U.S. and Canada from the WFA’s first ever Global Diversity & Inclusion Census.  The results were mixed, and our industry clearly still has a ways to go. The panel also featured other industry executives, including m/SIX’s Belinda Smith, CEO, Americas, in discussion on what agencies and advertisers need to do now—including a focus on ramping up their internal diversity and inclusion efforts, not just changing their creative or media partners.

Further Reading/Viewing: 

AW Sessions On-Demand | Ad Age’s Special Report | Campaign | Digiday | WFA Global DEI Census