Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary For April 13, 2024
New agency and ad tech data sets, Publicis' latest results and why spending on MFA sites can grow while television declines, despite likely differences in effectiveness
Firstly, exciting news: Madison and Wall is hiring! For more information, please visit https://madisonandwall.com/join-us or email me at brian@madisonandwall.com
With the conclusion of the first quarter of 2024, this past week I was able to produce some new data sets to separately explore the current health of independent agencies and the ad tech industry. In both cases, among dozens of privately-held agencies and tech companies tracked, growth is collectively accelerating. It would be noteworthy if this played out in the broader advertising industry given how strong 4Q23 was, although comparables are still relatively soft for at least this past quarter, and so it’s certainly possible.
Perhaps illustrating the net-positive state of agencies more directly, Publicis reported its very favorable 1Q24 results this past week. I reviewed their results here, including commentary on its PMX and Apex principal-based trading operations as among the factors supporting growth which aren’t widely explored by the analyst community.
I also provided some observations in relation to the growing awareness of MFA (“made-for-advertising”) sites and juxtaposed why media that doesn’t necessarily perform can grow faster than media which generally does, such as television by exploring the corporate decision-making process. One illustration among several which I offer is well-captured in a Simpsons episode (see season 26, episode 17 (“Waiting for Duffman”) at the 14:23 mark). As I conclude in the note, media platforms that provide what marketers need (i.e. perceived short-term performance) and bundle it with what they want (i.e. TV) are probably best positioned, which I think is among the reasons why Amazon and other retailers have positive prospects selling video-based advertising.
Related to some prior work this past week, I appeared this week on a video podcast with Deborah Malone of The Internationalist. It’s a good overview of my recent advertising forecast as well as the current state and future drivers of the global advertising industry.
Looking forward to next week, I’ll be in Brazil to speak at one of its main media industry conferences, Midia Master, hosted by Meio & Mensagem. For those in the region, please let me know if you will be there, too!