Risks/Opportunities to Agencies From Tariffs + Ads101 on National/CTV With Todd Gordon
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for March 29, 2025
Coming up in a few weeks: on April 22 at 11am eastern time, we’re interviewing the legendary Rishad Tobaccowala about his new book, Rethinking Work in a webinar presented by Adelaide. The first 100 registrants will receive a free copy of Rishad’s new book! https://www.adelaidemetrics.com/events/rethinking-work-a-candid-conversation-with-rishad-tobaccowala
More immediately, each week on the M&W Podcast, we discuss our work of the week and continue with our Advertising 101 series. new risks and opportunities for global agencies that follow from US government policies – especially in a world where tariffs on services may become more commonplace – as well as the latest results from S4, M&C Saatchi and more. This week we focus on national TV and connected TV buying with Todd Gordon, a former executive at WPP, Interpublic, TubeMogul, Adobe and Tatari.
This follows the past five weeks where we started diving into the role of agencies on Ep. 23 with Macquarie Securities' Tim Nollen, Ep. 24 with Heartmore's Carl Hartman where we focused on the function of the global account lead, on Ep. 25 on media agencies with Boston University professor Janna Greenberg, on Ep. 26 on media planning with Scott Wensman and Ep. 27 on media research with Stacey Schulman. Our first six parts focused on marketers and how they allocate resources (you can listen to these interviews on episodes 17-22 of The M&W podcast).
You can also hear more about our work on agencies through the Agency Business podcast, a collaboration with FusionFront Media’s Olivia Morley. This week’s episode features Kate O’Brien, founder of Power of Reasoning and a former executive at Omnicom agencies including Resolution Media and Hearts & Sciences.
Weekly Work
We reviewed the latest earnings results from S4 Capital and M&C Saatchi, assessing their most recent reporting periods and expectations for the current year.
More Context
Earlier this year we saw threats by the US of banking sanctions on Colombia (a couuntry which provides offshoring services as well as local market servicing for holding companies) and then this week we saw reports the EU is looking at tariffs on services in response to potential tariffs by the US on EU goods, the reported exclusion of Accenture from a pitch in the UK because of its new lack of a DEI policy and a letter from the US to some large French companies that they will need to abandon DEI policies in order to service US governmental entities.
It’s hard not to imagine impact from the bifurcation of policy preferences and tariffs on the business of agency holding companies by virtue of their presence in markets around the world. However, as we wrote in our piece on the topic, we think that agencies are better positioned than most companies around the advertising industry to adapt to the world that is upon us, given their organic/human and fluid nature - at least relative to other companies who are much more tied to their home markets.