Meta and Comcast Ad Trends, New Marketer CEO/CFO Commentary. PLUS Podcast Links to Our Advertising 101 Series With Gordon Ho (on Differences Between Choices Large, Mid and Small Marketers Make)
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for February 1, 2025
Each week on the M&W Podcast, we discuss Madison & Wall’s latest research. Last week we introduced our Advertising 101 series, a multi-part (i.e. every week all year long) tutorial that will explain how the industry really works and why money flows as it does.
The series continues on Episode 20 of the M&W Podcast with Gordon Ho, currently a Professor at USC and formerly a senior marketer at Disney, Princess Cruises and multiple start-ups. We discuss the differences that large, mid-sized and small marketers have in terms of their marketing activities. It follows on part 1 with Gerry D'Angelo where we discussed how marketers organize themselves, part 2 with Francisco Escobar on the role of marketing procurement and part 3 with Deborah Wahl on the choices marketers make in allocating their resources. It’s now available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
We have also recently launched the Agency Business podcast focused on the business of agencies in collaboration with Olivia Morley’s FusionFront Media. New episodes are available Mondays. In our most recent episode posted last Monday, Olivia and I are joined by Ruben Schreurs, CEO of Ebiquity. We talk about the evolving landscape of media investment, media audits and measuring marketing performance.
For more current alerts on this podcast and to see our well-informed hot-takes on agency news of the week, sign up to our free Agency Business companion Substack publication here.
Weekly work
We published two notes featuring our analysis of Meta’s recent earnings, including an initial take on their fourth quarter results (as well as those from Microsoft for its advertising business) and a follow-up capturing new disclosures included in the company’s 10-k.
We reviewed Comcast’s 4Q24 results highlighting their current advertising and video subscriber trends, additionally placing elements of Peacock’s business in context of Netflix’s.
We captured new commentary from the CEOs and CFOs of marketers including AT&T, Colgate, General Motors, Kimberly-Clark and LVMH. Advertising growth trends revealed by this group were collectively relatively tepid for the year and quarter, although as we have seen more broadly, packaged goods companies remained well-positioned to grow their spending in 2025.
More Context
Beyond the headline ad revenue growth rates (a strong +21% in constant currency terms), Meta results and its securities filings always provide a significant amount of new information about the company. This quarter we learned about:
The scale of the company’s AI-driven Advantage+ product and its efforts to make use of that product more of a default choice
Ad revenues in countries including Canada, China and India
The company’s characterization of risks from tariffs
Its new language around diversity – and a seemingly specific focus on cognitive diversity
Additional analysis on these topics is available to Madison and Wall corporate subscribers as well as advisory and consulting clients here and here.