SPOTIFY GETTING CLOSER TO DIRECT LISTING?:  As reported in the attached Music Business Worldwide link, its looking more and more likely that Spotify will Direct List itself on the NYSE.  This move is so rare that no tech company has ever done it on Wall Street.  The biggest drawback to Direct Listing is companies don’t raise any new capital because they don’t sell new stock as equity.  The only benefit is that current equity holders can start reaping a payout as they sell their own stock on the open market.  So why would Spotify Direct List?  It comes down to their VC-derived market valuation, which now sits at a whopping $13B.  If they expose themselves to a full IPO it’s very unlikely that many would buy new stock at that valuation, which would cause a major plummet in their share price all at once.  Instead by Direct Listing they can let out a little bit of line at a time, and hope to control a gradual stock price decline as investors determine their true market value.  Does this sound like an appealing stock opportunity to anyone?  #yikes

NEXTRADIO . . . THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD(N’T):  RAIN recently ran an update article on the status of NextRadio.  As a quick refresher, NextRadio is the passion project of Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan to gain industry-wide adoption of FM chips (receivers) into mobile devices.  The original idea was valid – as audio consumption moves from terrestrial broadcasts to cellular/wifi delivery radio stations need to be available on these new platforms or face extinction.  Since NextRadio’s launch in 2013 Smulyan & Co. have made decent strides on the supply side, by getting the chip activated on Android phones sold in the Big Four telcos.  (Apple is still the notable holdout.)  But the real problem for NextRadio isn’t about the availability of FM chips in mobile devices, it’s the lack of audience demand to actually listen to local radio stations on smartphones.  I guess you could argue certain live sports play-by-play or long-form talk could be appealing, but not music since there are about a hundred better ways to hear your favorite songs/artists on a mobile device.  Maybe that’s why NextRadio recently announced the goal of adding music streaming (besides just the stations’ simulcasts) to the platform.  I think the article’s title pretty much says it all when Mr. Smulyan describes NextRadio as being in the “early stages”.  What?  This was created in 2013, roughly the Mesozoic era for digital streaming.  If NextRadio is still stuck in the early stages after four years that doesn’t provide much optimism for the next four.

THE BENEFITS OF RADICAL CANDOR:  Finally today, I’d like to leave you with some perspective on the different approaches to people leadership from an acclaimed CEO coach named Kim Scott.  Her theory is that all mangers’ styles can be grouped into one of four quadrants based on two learned personality traits we’ve acquired over the years.  The first trait can best be described as concern or empathy, which manifests itself in a “Care Personally” approach to management.  The second trait comes from the idea of professionalism and getting the job done, which creates a “Challenge Directly” management style.  Every manager’s leadership approach can be plotted along both continuums, which creates the X and Y axis of the graph below.  According to Ms. Scott the ideal management approach is in the upper right “Radical Candor” section, because it combines both caring about the people on the team and the willingness to be direct with constructive criticism to help the team improve.  To better understand the of value Radical Candor it helps to contrast this segment with the other three.  The attached Business Insider link does a nice job summarizing the concept and explaining how each segment is interconnected.  In the article Ms. Scott says the personality traits for Radical Candor are learned, meaning you don’t have to be born with the skills and can instead develop them as you become a more seasoned manager.  Now I bet you’re starting to wonder where you (or your manager) would be plotted on this graph?!?

Have a great Tuesday guys!

TOP DIGITAL STATS FROM THE PAST WEEK:  As usual, I’d like to start off with AdWeek’s roundup of the top digital stats from the past week.  There are some decent “Did you knows?” in this week’s list.  For instance, did you know Mother’s Day is now the third biggest retail holiday in the US, with seven times more spending on Mom than Dad (stat #1)?  Did you know Friday is the highest traffic volume day for the QSR industry (stat #7)?  Did you know over half of SMBs still don’t have a company Facebook page, despite the fact that FB has over 5M unique advertisers (stat #9)?  And my personal favorite, did you know there’s now a pharma-endemic publisher called HealthiNation which claims it’s user-level data is so specific that it can charge up to $4 per completed view (stat #5).  That’s not $4 per thousand . . . we’re talking $4 per view.  And yes, the CPM on that would be $4,000.  Nice gig if you can get it!

THE STATE OF AUTO IN THE US:  There’s been a ton of chatter in the US Auto Industry about a potential flattening (and possible decline) of annual unit sales in 2017 after seven straight years of growth.  Wall Street has also created a huge disconnection between current sales/profitability and market valuation/stock price – the graph below pretty much says it all.  The attached Business Insider article is a really good dissection of the tectonic forces affecting the industry right now.  It’s particularly interesting to see how GM and Ford are navigating challenges from investors on stalled share prices, and what level annual unit sales can fall to before the domestic OEMs become unprofitable again (spoiler alert . . . they’re all safely in the black).  If you touch any of the three auto tiers this one is a must read!

MARTECH MADNESS:     Over the past week you may have seen this Lumacape pop up in your LinkedIn feed and wondered what in the hell it is.  It’s a visual representation of the entire Martech ecosystem as seen through the eyes of the editor of Chief Martech (yes, that’s a publication and a three-day conference).  Better known as the “Martech 5000”, it’s a compilation of the logos from 5,138 companies which now do business in the Martech realm, spatially organized by service(s) they provide.  What’s crazy about this chart, besides the obvious eyestrain, is the proliferation of Martech vendors. In 2014 there were just 1,000 companies on this chart.  Comparatively, from 2016 to 2017 over new 1,000 firms were added.  That tells you anyone with a proprietary algorithm and even a small amount of angel funding can set up shop as a Martech.  With so many players in the space is there any wonder why the industry is fragmented by the technical standards being overlayed across digital media, and why the publishers are constantly playing catch up on the next new tracking pixel to hit the market?  Might be an obvious statement here, but if there was ever an industry in need of consolidation Martech is it!

Have a great Monday guys!

MORE EARNINGS CALL PAIN FOR RADIO:  I’ll kick off Friday the way I started Monday, with another reminder of the challenges facing Broadcast Radio.  This time it’s coming from Emmis Media, who reported a -6.6% drop in revenue compared to Q1’16.  The pain was mostly felt in larger markets like LA and NY, whose 2016 revenue was being artificially propped up by Political dollars.  Emmis’s financial situation has become so dire that it was forced to sell it’s only LA station KPWR-FM (Power 106) just to pay down other debt.  This is the radio equivalent of being stranded on a desert island and deciding to eat your own arm to avoid starving to death.  Yes it might be a short-term fix, but eventually you’ll have nothing left to eat.  As Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan framed things on their Earnings Call, radio is a challenged industry.  I’d say that’s an understatement Mr. Smulyan.

MACY’S GOING DOWNTOWN:  In another sign that the End of Days is coming for Retail, perennial premium department store brand Macy’s is starting to downscale itself to compete with the likes of TJ Maxx, Kohl’s, etc..  In the attached Business Insider link, the Macy’s CFO outlines two strategies to get more lean and mean, in order to become more price competitive.  The first plan is to reduce staffing by rolling out more self-service kiosks.  This test will begin in the shoe department, and if effective work its way through the store.  This is significant because traditional department stores were built on the customer service concept.  It’s already hard to find a human employee in stores these days, and self-service will take shopping for yourself to a whole new level.  The other cost-saving move is to begin testing off mall locations.  Traditionally Macy’s used a mall anchor strategy for store placement, and this real estate costs more per square foot than free-standing/strip mall locations.  As mall traffic continues to dwindle Macy’s is hoping to cost save with off mall locations, which will allow it to become more aggressive on price.  Should be interesting to see how these two initiatives impact Macy’s overall brand perception, shopping experience, and bottom line.

TV DECONSTRUCTION EXPLAINED THROUGH THE EYES OF THE “HINGE GENERATION”:  Of all the ways to describe what’s happening to TV right now, the attached video clip might just have the best summation.  In it, the CMO of Magisto (video creative firm), puts forth the concept of the “Hinge Generation” who are viewers of a certain age that were raised in front of the living room TV, but are now OLV video consumers.  So how did this group affect TV’s transition from the traditional set top to digital?  There are three reasons.  First is a dismantling of the one-to-many broadcast paradigm in which viewers understood the trade-off of consuming ads in return for content.  Comparatively, today’s OLV environment is a more personalized one-to-one experience, in which ads are more optional and avoidable than ever  before.  The second transformation comes from scalable production.  Since anyone with a phone can now create and post digital content, the traditional model of big studio production is no longer a barrier of entry.  This phenomenon of scale-reduction has created the third transformation related to video advertising.  Running a standard piece of creative across a handful of networks in a rating points buy is so yesterday.  Instead custom audience segments and even specific viewers can be served ads via device ID, creating more efficient and more accountable video campaigns than ever before.  The combined effect of these factors has created a video environment that looks nothing like the family rooms of yesteryear, where Hingers (like yours truly) used to watch hour and hour of TV.

Have a great Friday (and weekend) everyone!

SNAPCHAT’S EARNINGS BLUES:  Being a pre-IPO tech darling is apparently easier than becoming a public company which must report earnings to Wall Street.  Snapchat found this out the hard way during yesterday’s debut Q1 Earnings Call.  Snap, Inc. announced the triple bogey of severely decelerating new users (added just 8M in Q1), bigger than expected losses (-$2.2B if you include stock compensation), and a top line revenue miss ($7M less than expected).  All this adds up to pain for the stock price which dropped 26% in just one day.  Granted Snap is still a very young company, so you have to expect some volatility as an investor.  But the leading economic indicators all look pretty worrisome right now.  There are tons of articles on this, but I thought this Business Insider piece provides the most balanced and accurate assessment.

FAKE SOCIAL MEDIA HAVING REAL LIFE CONSEQUENCES:  In a weird irony the “grassroots” social movement against the FCC’s push to roll back Net Neutrality regulations may actually be truly fake news.  The effort called “Go FCC Yourself” being propagated by English comedian and HBO host John Oliver, looks more like a sham than anything.  In a prime example of unintended consequences the effort is having ugly real life effects, including death threats against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.  As detailed by the attached Free Beacon link, Mr. Oliver is using his social platform to protest the FCC’s dismantling of NN.  Depending on your point of view that could be totally above board.  But when you look at the online comments of supporters you’ll see names like “Jesus Christ” and “Melania Trump”.  Then there’s the use of bots to drive up views and push the URL higher on Google searches.  All of this would be sophomoric shock media stuff if it didn’t inspire others to threaten the FCC Chairman.  Not cool John Oliver, not cool!

“SUPERSTAR ECONOMICS” ACROSS MUSIC HISTORY:  If you’re a long time reader you know I sometimes like to geek out on obscure history, especially as it relates to music.  For my kindred spirits out there the attached BBC link, unearthed by Pandora’s Alex Jonas, is a must read.  It chronicles the history of musical performances across centuries of technological advances, and parallels the earnings power commanded by performers at each phase of the evolution.  The fascinating part is a direct correlation between how much an artist can earn to how many people hear their music.  Before the first telegraph lines transmitted audio signals in the 1800s the most highly sought after opera singer in the world would make less than 1% (in comparable dollars back then) to what today’s top artists earn, because they could only perform in front of a few hundred people.  Thanks to technological advancements, from the gramophone all the way to the internet, as exponentially more listeners are exposed to their music, artists’ compensation has (thankfully) increased by the same scale.  It’s a fascinating read if you’re the only other person on the planet like me who enjoys music history and economics.

Have a great Thursday everyone!

EVEN MORE DATA ON VOICE ENABLEMENT:  In yesterday’s post I featured new eMarketer research on the usage and growth trends of voice enablement platforms.  While I usually don’t recycle the same story on consecutive days, I thought the attached Digiday feature does a nice job of expounding on the Voice movement.  In particular, Amazon’s use of the “Dot” product to create a lower priced entry point for voice enablement hardware is insightful.  It’s also useful to see the types of activities most often conducted via voice platforms .  Spoiler alert . . . music is up there.  And I was really surprised to see that last graph about the impact non-returning users have on new voice enablement platforms.  It truly proves the adage that you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

QUESTIONING THE VALUE OF A LIKE:  Over the last several years countless marketing dollars have been spent trying to get consumers to “like” a product on Facebook.  The anecdotal thinking is that if you like the product you’ll become brand loyal and be more likely to buy it over the competition.  But what if the cause-and-effect cycle works the other way?  Instead of likes driving purchases, what if people who have already bought a product become more likely to like it?  (Sorry for the like-fest is that last sentence.)  It’s an interesting question a group of researchers put to the test in the attached Harvard Business Review link.  While the levels of testing were complicated to understand, they yielded a specific result.  Despite the fact that consumer who’ve liked a product’s FB page were 11% more likely to buy that brand, the like was most often a post-purchase activity.  Translation . . . while likes might feel good for marketers as a way to build a social following, they don’t actually initiate purchase activity or predispose brand preference.  Keep this in mind, and feel free to roll your eyes, the next time you hear an ad which ends in “like us on Facebook”.

IS THE TRADITIONAL AD MODEL DYING?:  Finally today, I’d like to leave you with a “big picture” question to ponder.  What if traditional advertising as we know it no longer existed because it stopped working altogether?  In this rather dark piece, Forrester Research poses the question of whether we’re approaching a tipping point at which consumers’ frustration with the ad experience creates a bypass action.  The bypass could be in the form of ad blockers or paid subscriptions to unlock ad-free content.  When you pair this consumer weariness with marketers’ frustrations (graph below), you wonder if we might be about to completely upend the primary marketing model.  In this new paradigm forced impression-based ads would be replaced by native integrations, value exchange offerings, and paid product placements.  The one thing these new ad strategies have in common is that they flow with individuals’ content consumption instead of standing in the way of it.  While I think there’s a remote chance the traditional ad model will completely disappear, there may be some long-term legs to this theory.

Have a great Wednesday guys!

TV’S UPFRONT CONUNDRUM:  As this year’s Upfronts begin there’s an interesting battle shaping up between two contradicting economic factors.  On one hand Network TV ratings are down.  And I mean way down, as in a 33% drop in prime time ratings over the past four years.  Since TV pricing is derived from audience size you’d expect rates to decrease right along with ratings.  However that’s not happening.  The attached Bloomberg article articulates the point about TV clients becoming fed up with having to pay more and more for ever-shrinking audiences.  On the other side of the pricing curve is a little thing called demand.  This year demand for traditional TV is expected to be up due to brands’ skittishness about OLV.  With heightened concerns over brand safety and fraud in digital, more national brands are rushing back to traditional TV.  So what will happen during the Upfronts?  If the brands’ desire to return to the safety of TV outweighs the cost inefficiencies of declining ratings, get ready for rates to surge as more demand competes for a diminished audience.  Or will brands stay with OLV despite the quality concerns, because traditional TV is no longer worth the cost?  Should be fascinating to watch this one play out.

VOICE ENABLEMENT BEGINS TO MAINSTREAM:  By now most of us have heard the term “Voice is the new Touch”, which refers to the mainstreaming of voice enablement technology.  The underlying driver of this movement is screenless IoT connected devices, which no longer support the visual/touch screen communication input.  Instead these devices rely on auditory communication, which of course means voice.  eMarketer is out with some fresh voice enablement research to provide perspective on where things stands.  The current voice enablement market is a two horse race between Amazon Echo and Google Home.  But it’s a very segregated 1-2, with Amazon taking a commanding 71% of the market right now and Amazon mopping up the next 24%, which leaves 5% for everyone else.   Additionally, eMarketer shows current and trend usage stats by generation in the graph below.  Not surprisingly tech forward millennials are the heaviest users, but you can see voice enablement adoption ageing up over the next several years.  I also find it interesting that voice enablement is the first game changing hardware platform not perfected by Apple in almost a generation.  Although Sari has been on your Apple mobile devices for years, it feels like there was an “iHome” miss by Tim Cook in there somewhere.

INNOVATION COMES IN MANY DIFFERENT FORMS:  Finally today, AdWeek is out with its list of Today’s 15 Most Innovative Ad Executives.  It’s a fascinating list because it includes a wide cross-section of job levels from agency Presidents to Associate Directors, who work at everywhere from global AORs to niche Creative shops.  Usually you either get the top-of-the-top on a “most powerful” list, or a bunch of cool kids you’ve never heard of before in a “thirty under thirty” ranker.  But this list brings an eclectic combination of backgrounds and points of view from the bleeding edge of agency thinking.  It’s a great read from some of our current and future industry leaders.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

Editor’s Note:  For today’s post I’d like to deep dive into what’s occurring in Broadcast Radio right now.  Today we’ll break down the current revenue erosion of the major players, and offer some insight into what’s causing this to happen.

Last Thursday-Friday several major Radio Broadcasters announced their Q1’17 earnings.  So what happened?  Let’s just say there was more red in these reports than a mafia movie.  While each company has their own story, the whole picture looks bleak for the industry.  To help sort this out I’ve included the following set of links.  The first three are about individual broadcasters’ earnings calls, and the last is Radio Ink’s very honest and telling reaction to what’s happening in the industry right now.

• iHeart CFO Richard Bressler says “we were surprised by a soft ad market”, and tries to explain why iHeart’s cash on hand dropped by half a billion dollars. (link)
• Radio One CEO Alfred Liggins basically asks to be bought by saying they’d be a “willing participant if there was further consolidation”, after Q1 rev dropped 7% YoY. (link)
• CBS buries a $12M YoY revenue decline for their Radio division deep inside their overall financials as they prepare to spin it off in to Entercom. (link)
• Radio Ink reacts to a steady drum beat of layoffs and declining revenue reports with an article title “Can We Be Honest? It Wasn’t A Great Week For Radio”. (link)

Now that you’ve read the “What” is happening to the radio business it’s important to understand the “Why”.  On the surface the answer to why Broadcast Radio’s business is eroding seems simple enough – technological advancements like satellite, downloads and now streaming make it possible to get the same music delivered in a better, more personalized way.  But what if that was just a small portion of the dilemma for Radio?  Like every iceberg, the part of the problem you see above the water line shouldn’t worry you . . . it’s the larger part lurking beneath the surface that’s the real problem.  In the following Jacobs Media link a theory is put forth on the digital transformation of the retail environment as the fundamental problem for Radio.  Simply put, Radio’s core strength of playing commercials to someone in a car as they’re heading off to a store no longer works, because consumers aren’t going to traditional retail stores like they used to.  As evidenced by the following graph, 53% of consumers did half or all of their Holiday’16 shopping online.  Marketing to this group requires more of a digital approach (either on web or in app), which Radio is woefully ill-equipped to deliver.  Keep in mind as you read this that Jacobs is one of the top Radio Consultancies in the industry.  So if these guys are sounding the alarm for Radio’s entire revenue paradigm, you know there’s a problem.

Hopefully this is useful perspective as you start your week.  Have a great Monday guys!

TWITTER IS GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT LIVE VIDEO:  As previewed in their Newfronts Presentation, Twitter seems poised to double down on its commitment towards video as a way to reignite revenue growth.  Twitter has already made a push into more OLV content and video ad units to create additional high value inventory.  Now they’re following Facebook into the live TV space with new content partnerships, like the Bloomberg example highlighted in the article.  Twitter’s new live video platform, which is tentatively named TickTock (hold the Kesha jokes pls), is being positioned as “TV for millennials”.  Twitter has led the way with live video streaming before with examples like last year’s NFL deal, only to get outbid for content by bigger competitors down the road.  So it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

TRITON WEBCAST METRICS – FEB’17:  Yesterday Triton released its Webcast Metrics Ratings for February.  There’s some serious momentum at the top of the ranker with Pandora increasing its total listening by 6% over January, and Spotify adding 13%.  Overall stream listening grew +8% MoM, and was up an impressive +12% over Feb’16.  As you’re digesting these numbers remember Triton doesn’t distinguish between free ad-supported and ad-free subscription listening.  So much of Spotify’s growth could be coming from non-addressable subscribers.  Also keep in mind Pandora’s sharp upturn was probably connected to the limited release of its new “Premium” subscription tier.  Since Premium didn’t go general availability until March 18^th we’ll need to wait a few more months to see audience stats with this new tier factored in.  At the other end of the ranker, the stream platforms of the leading radio broadcasters seems to be stagnating and falling further behind the pureplays.

EVERYTHING YOU’LL EVER WANT TO KNOW ABOUT RETAIL:  Finally, I’d like to give you plenty of reading material for the weekend.  Attached is a post from a blog called Big Commerce, which includes 135 of the top Retail stats for 2017.  The author claims this is an eight minute read, but only if you want to self-induce an aneurism.   For the research Big Commerce surveyed over 1,000 individuals on every conceivable purchase habit, and then sliced that data by every demographic and psychographic variable you can imagine.  My favorite stat of the entire study – one in ten consumers admitted to buying something online after drinking alcohol.  I’m sure the actual percentage is far higher than just the ones who admitted to SUIing (shopping under the influence).  Anyways, there’s something in here for any one or any category in Retail.  And taken in aggregate it’s a great snapshot of how today’s purchase journey is influenced.  So who has plans with Kim Crawford and Etsy tonight?!?

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!

For those not in the know  . . . May the Fourth be with you!  Ok , I’m going back to being an adult now. 🙂

STORM CLOUDS ON SOUNDEXCHANGE’S HORIZON?:  SoundExchange, the clearinghouse used by the US Music Industry to collect audio streaming royalties, just reported its Q1’17 earnings.  On the surface the story looks positive, as reported in this RAIN link.  But there’s a significant change occurring within SE’s business model that’s being underreported here.  Compared to Q1’16 SE’s revenue dropped 15% (from $189M to $162M), because Pandora shifted some of its royalty payments from the SoundExchange to pay the labels directly.  While Pandora is still paying royalties through SE for music played on the free ad-supported side, royalties for music played on the “Plus” or “Premium” tiers are now covered under the label direct licensing deals.  So it’s reasonable to expect SE’s revenue to continue to decline as listening on Pandora becomes more diversified across all three tiers.  It’s also remarkable to see just how much of an impact Pandora has the music industry’s overall licensing structure, when one partial change from one streamer could swing overall payouts by 15%.

THE RELEVANCY OF DATA IN HEALTHCARE MARKETING:  Staying on Pandora for a minute, check out the attached eHealthcare link.  It’s one of the most comprehensive third party articles I’ve seen on the strengths and best practices of using a premium publisher (Pandora) to maximize ROAS in a specific category (Healthcare).  Towards the end of the article there’s a fascinating real life illustration of how data can be used to serve contextually relevant ads to individual listeners.  Keep in mind the “How Well Does Pandora Know Me?” example came from just one hour of listening.  That’s quite a marketing punch to pack in 60 minutes for a healthcare client, or any other client for that matter.  (Special kudos to Pandora’s Lee Ann Longinotti who’s featured/sourced in this piece.)  Great stuff!

STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A “SNAPFAD”:  Finally today, my DG spies have been hard at work uncovering a competitive sales piece about Snapchat.  The sample size for this study seems legit with 3,000 adults surveyed.  If these numbers are even close to accurate Snapchat has some trouble brewing. In particular, the stats about 80% of 18-24 yos always or often skipping the ads and 62% of users saying they’ll leave Snapchat for the next hot Social platform, are troubling.  It paints a picture of Snapchat users being more concerned about social connections overall and less concerned about the platform they’re on.  There’s also a little dig in the bottom right corner about 24% of Snapchat listeners still preferring Instagram, which comports with the user growth trends being reported for both companies right now.  Can you picture a day when Snapchat is as dated an irrelevant as yesteryear publishers like Yahoo, AOL, etc.?  I can.

Have a great Thursday guys!

TIME SPENT SHIFTING TO DIGITAL:  eMarketer is out with an updated set of stats around Time Spent across the different media types in the US.  The aggregate number is pretty staggering – we spend an average of 12:07 per day consuming some form of mass media.  Before you freak out on that stat (yes, it’s about three-fourths of our awake time), know that eMarketer credits each media type for time spent even if an individual is multi-tasking.  So if you’re watching TV while second screening your mobile device both media types get counted simultaneously.  The trend in this year’s data is decidedly digital – with 5:50 per day being spent on a digital device (almost half of all media time). It’s also worth noting 3:14 of Digital time spent is on a mobile device.  The traditional media types were down again with TV at 4:04, Radio at 1:26, and Print barely on the radar screen at :25 per day.  As you digest these numbers remember the golden rule of media – ad revenue ALWAYS follows time spent.  With that in mind brace yourself for Digital, and especially Mobile, revenue to keep growing at the expense of every other media type out there.

THE STATE OF THE GLOBAL AGENCY BIZ:  AdAge has compiled a set of 10 stats which give us a snapshot into the state of the Global Agency Industry.  The biggest headline is that first stat (graph below) – agency revenue growth is starting to decelerate to +4.4% in 2016, but it’s still on a relative hot streak with six consecutive years of growth under its belt.  It’s worth noting the top five global holding companies (Group M, Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and IPG respectively), saw +8.6% YoY growth, which could bolster the argument for consolidation as the big boys at the top continue to take share at the expense of the smaller independents.  Also keep an eye on stat #4 – four business consultancies (who are not traditional agencies), now rank among the top 10 agencies.  This is proof positive that the lines between business management, data enablement, and marketing are starting to blur.  Expect that trend to continue over the next several years.  Really fascinating stuff if you work at or with an agency.

“ATTENTION THEFT” VS. THE FAIR MARKETING RELATIONSHIP:  There’s a basic social contract in media that goes something like this . . . in return for receiving free content I’ll be exposed to advertising messages which helps underwrite the content I’m consuming.  That’s how ad-supported Broadcast, Digital, and even some forms of free Print publications operate.  But what happens when media platforms intentionally steal attention without giving back meaningful content in return?  This practice is exposed by Wired in the attached link.  Their Gas Station TV example perfectly illustrates the growing problem.  In the history of mankind nobody has ever sought out news/weather/sports information at the gas pump.  Yet there it is, a :90 faux news loop which plays on a screen within the pump itself.  You didn’t ask for this content, yet it commands your attention because you’re trapped pumping gas.  During this window they’ll conveniently serve you an ad or two . . . and commit he perfect “attention theft” crime.   Admittedly Gas Station TV isn’t going to make or break the ad industry, but it’s part of an increasing trend towards attention-stealing advertising.  The problem this creates is a creeping numbness towards valid commercials, which waters down their ad effectiveness, which makes it harder and harder for content publishers to sell enough ads to pay their bills.  So who’s ready to go fill their tank without having to sit through a commercial break?!?

Have a great Wednesday guys!