Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary
Analysis of news and data from Walmart, Vizio, Dentsu, The Trade Desk and Roku and others for the week ending Feb 17, 2024. Also, a new publication on the future of trading, currency and measurement
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This past week saw more results covering the fourth quarter and full year of 2023, and we saw more affirmation about the weak state of television around the world, with declines for most of the largest incumbent broadcasters in France, India, Australia, Germany, much as we can see in the United States. At the same time, we also saw reporting about Walmart’s interest in Vizio, a television manufacturer, but a business which primarily makes money selling data and advertising. The news speaks to the notion that performance-oriented media companies may be better positioned to sell brand-based media than the other way around.
You can watch some additional commentary and my broader perspective on television advertising on a Bloomberg appearance this week here starting at the 2:20 mark.
In agency-land, Dentsu reported unsurprisingly weak fourth quarter results (and, adding to the managerial changes that have followed from the absorption of Dentsu Aegis into Dentsu – and likely contributed to business challenges -- another key departure with the loss of the company’s CFO).
Meanwhile, two big ad-tech-centric companies, The Trade Desk and Roku also reported results, showing that digital advertising continues to expand fairly rapidly (by low double digit levels for typical advertisers). Companies who have experienced anything different are generally losing share.
Separately, I also redistributed a publication from the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), a division of the Advertising Research Foundation (the ARF). CIMM is producing a series of papers, think pieces and perspectives from leading industry analysts, experts and thought leaders to provide insights and occasionally provocative perspectives on critical issues of interest to its members and to the wider industry.
As part of this effort, I was commissioned to write about the future of media trading, measurement and currency. Informed by the perspectives of more than a dozen practitioners and my own proprietary research, we explore a range of considerations that inform how to think about the evolution of these aspects of the industry over the rest of this decade.
The full document, a 40-page report, is available here, courtesy of CIMM: