Joe Mandese

For all the stock that brands and their agencies put on the value of consumer mentions in social media, it actually ranks relatively low among the modes of communication people use to express their sentiment about brands to others.

According to a speed test analysis released by WhistleOut, the average US internet speed increased 40 percent during the pandemic to 118.4 Mbps, versus an average of 84.5 Mbps pre-pandemic. The report, which is based on more than 717,000 internet speed tests, doesn’t explain exactly why the fixed internet became so much swifter, but it cites the fact that many US households upgraded their plans with their internet service providers, presumably to accommodate all that video streaming, those Zoom meetings, and other lifestyle changes necessitated by working and living at home 24/7.

The Mobile Marketing Association and WARC's new joint "State of the Industry" report found that while mobile marketing budgets boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, connsumer privacy concerns remain a significant barrier to growth. The top-line finding of the report is that two out of three marketers boosted their mobile marketing budgets over the past year, at least partly due to the acceleration of ecommerce following the pandemic. And while marketers appear to be more optimistic about almost every potential barrier to further mobile marketing budget growth, consumers' concern over their p

First and foremost, lower TV spending in 2016 political advertising may simply be a function of better media buying, said Ben Angle, senior media buyer-national media research at Planning & Placement. “In terms of TV being down, I think you really have to attribute it to master negotiators beating the stations down,” said Angle. Another factor was simply leveraging the TV calendar to commit buys during softer rate-card periods -- “booking in June, July -- or even, in some cases, May -- to get the best rate.” Angle said he did not really see a fundamental shift in the political media mix, and attributed most of the dollar-share changes to more effective and efficient TV buying. “There’s more to it than just people not spending money in TV,” he explained. That said, Elizabeth Kalmbach, vice president-group media direct at KSM Media, said TV’s share of political media budgets reflects what’s going on in all categories.

For the first time since it began ranking the world’s biggest media owners, Publicis' Zenith Optimedia unit says two Chinese companies have made its “Top Thirty Global Media Owners” list: China’s TV network CCTV and search engine Baidu.

They join Brazil’s Globo as the only Top Thirty based in “emerging markets.” Otherwise, the list looks like what you might expect, with Google on top -- by a wide margin -- as the world’s largest media owner.

In fact, ZO estimates Google’s revenues are 47% higher than the second-ranked company on the list, US satellite TV operator DirecTV. And Google’s dominance isn’t waning. It actually grew eight points from a 39% margin over DirecTV in 2013.

Digital media may have the fastest organic growth rates, but it was the traditional medium of television that catapulted Madison Avenue's media spending during the first quarter of 2014.

Total media buys processed by the major agency holding companies pooling their data through Standard Media Index jumped 18% over the first quarter of 2013, largely thanks to blockbuster TV events -- especially coverage of the Sochi Olympic Games, the NCAA college basketball tournament, the Academy Awards, and AMC's season finale of “Walking Dead.”

TV ad spending soared 21% and accounted for nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of all advertising buys processed by the four agency holding companies -- Aegis, Havas, Interpublic and Publicis -- during the fourth quarter. “Digital” spending also continued to soar, expanding 23% during the first quarter, albeit with a big boost from blockbuster-infused traditional media companies’ digital inventory. NBC Universal, for example, broke into the top 10 list of Madison Avenue’s “digital vendors” ranking, thanks to an Olympian 249% surge in its digital advertising revenues during the quarter.

One of the surprising take-aways at Marketing Politics here was, that despite the hyper-focus on “digital” and “multi-screen,” TV remains far and away the most vital medium for political campaigns.

That point was underscored on the local election scene during a presentation by Russ Schriefer, partner at Strategic Partners & Media. Schriefer tried to explain why TV works better than ever in political marketing, and he attributed at least part of it to the fact that TV programming may also be better than it has ever been before.

“Today, we still find that television is still moving numbers,” Schriefer reiterated, noting that when he invests ad budgets on television he sees direct results in the polls, and hopefully, in the polling booths. “As long as the creative is halfway decent, they will spit back what I am saying,” Schriefer said of the post-broadcast polling. Broadcast is the only medium, basically, where that is happening. It doesn’t necessarily happen in cable either.”

Schriefer did cite a variety of studies showing that the political media mix is beginning to disperse, and greater efficiencies are coming from those mixes, but he said he doesn’t see much of a shift from broadcast TV’s dominance in the next several years, especially in local races. Specifically, Schriefer said that campaigns that used to be able to generate a messaging effect with 300 to 400 rating points now require about 1,000 points, and that when the noise gets particularly cluttered near the final run.