One Big, Beautiful Deterrent to Foreign Investment in US Ad Biz, New Video Data (Sub Trends, Ad Loads, Consumer Spend), Publicis’ Latest Influencer Agency + Chocolate Industry Analysis
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for May 24, 2025
Will you be in Cannes for the Lions? Are you returning via Paris? If so, on Sunday June 22 (the Sunday following the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity - please note it’s Sunday June 22, not Monday June 23 as we erroneously wrote earlier this week in our annual analysis of the Chocolate industry) we will be organizing another “chocolate marathon.” It’s a nearly 26-mile path around Paris, France over the course of a day. To see a past route and get a sense of what it looks like, visit www.chocolatemarathon.com. If you would like to join in for some or all of the day please reach out and let us know.
On this week’s M&W Podcast we review the potential consequences for foreign capital investment that may follow from tax policy changes in the US, go over new TV data we published on pay TV subscriptions, video ad loads and video spending and assess the news of Publicis' acquisition of a new influencer agency.
Separately, on Agency Business, Olivia Morely and I interview Sean Corcoran, President of BarkleyOKRP’s MissionOne Media and longtime agency leader to discuss what it takes to build a media brand inside a full-service agency structure. Sean walks through his career path, from political work and affiliate marketing to stints as a Forrester analyst and co-founder of Mediahub. He explains how his experience defining media categories and evaluating agencies from the outside shaped his approach to building challenger shops on the inside.
We also appeared for a full-length interview this past week on FirstParty Capital’s The FPC Podcast where we discussed the impact of tariffs on the industry at large, American isolationism, and why it is prudent to diversify in an era of de-globalization
Weekly Work:
One Big Beautiful Deterrent (to Foreign Investment in US Ad Businesses)
New 1Q25 TV Data: Pay TV Subs Down, Video Spend Up and CTV Ad Inventory Low
Chocolate Industry 2025 Update
More Context:
It should go without saying that de-globalization matters to the advertising industry, which has become highly globalized outside of China in the past decades. Consider that since 2016 the five biggest sellers of advertising outside of China (Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok) have collectively grown from 24% of global advertising ex-China to 62%. Agencies and ad tech companies are similarly global with massive numbers of cross-border teams of workers and clients.
However, there have been many actions from the US government over the past few months which are causing de-globalization to occur. These actions range from volatile tariff rates (whether threatened or actually imposed), actual deterrents to cross-border travel and threats of commercial punishments (in some cases) if companies attempt to apply standards required elsewhere to their US operations.
We can now add tax policies to the list of de-globalization drivers. While there are many aspects of the new One Big, Beautiful Bill Act to focus on, as we wrote this week, the Bill potentially raises withholding taxes on foreign suppliers of capital – individuals, investors and companies – if their home countries apply policies that are contrary to the US governments’ preferences in some spheres. While there will surely be some suppliers who will choose to take the risk of building a business in the US without as much of an assurance as they had in the past that they will be able to eventually repatriate capital, the net effect is surely negative. As with the threat of tariffs, the threat of punitive tax policies – separate from the actual act of imposing them – will be another factor supporting greater investment in the industry outside of the United States going forward.