The six second sweet spot: Opera Mediaworks’ Mark Slade on WAP and Walter White February 1, 2016 Consumers may be spending more and more time on their mobiles, but the advertising industry has had a hard time convincing brands to follow them there. Now, things could be looking up. By the end of 2016, eMarketer estimates that mobile advertising will account for half of the £8.94bn spent on digital marketing in the [...]
Rupert Murdoch slams “posh boys” in Downing Street over Google tax deal January 27, 2016 Media mogul Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter today to blast politicians in the UK and the US for giving Google an easy way out of questions over its tax arrangements. Google recently reached a £130m deal with HMRC over corporation tax claims covering a 10-year period. However, Murdoch referred to the payment as a "token amount", handed over [...]
Channel 4’s new chairman named as Charles Gurassa by Ofcom to replace Lord Burns as privatisation question mark hangs January 26, 2016 Charles Gurassa, the deputy chairman of EasyJet has been named the new chairman of Channel 4, succeeding Lord Burns. “I am delighted that we have appointed a chairman of Charles’ calibre to Channel 4. He brings with him a wealth of experience built up across a broad range of sectors," said Ofcom chairman Dame Patricia Hodge. The [...]
Guardian reveals cost-cutting plans: Membership focus to help break even as Kings Cross move considered January 25, 2016 The Guardian has revealed it plans to cut costs by 20 per cent over the next three years in a bid to break even and could even consider leaving its plush Kings Cross headquarters. The media group which publishes The Guardian and The Observer hopes to break even by 2018/19 by reducing operating costs which currently stand at £268m a year. [...]
Virtual reality: The next frontier. Visualise’s Henry Stuart on motion sickness and the Swayze Effect January 25, 2016 This is the year, so we are told, that virtual reality (VR) takes off. Hotly anticipated headsets from Oculus and Playstation are due for release later in 2016 and will finally bring VR into people’s homes. “We’re hugely excited,” says Henry Stuart, co-founder and chief executive of VR production company Visualise, which has produced around 60 [...]
Drinks all round: What the Internet of Things means for marketers January 18, 2016 Before brands start talking about how they should embrace the Internet of Things (IoT), they first need to think about how they understand it.” According to SharpEnd founder Cameron Worth, marketers have been coming at the expanding digital ecosystem of interconnected objects from the wrong angle. “And if they keep talking about fridges,” he says, “I’m [...]
The space to create: Ogilvy & Mather UK’s Annette King on New York and the South Bank January 18, 2016 "If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data – it doesn’t mean the ad is written. Then you’ve got to close the door and write something…” Few would question David Ogilvy’s contribution to advertising. But the idea of closed doors seems anathema to the creative process today [...]
Sky’s helping fund London’s Garden Bridge and will name part of it January 13, 2016 Sky has been named as one of the private backers of the controversial Garden Bridge, and will name part of the new structure. The undisclosed donation to the Garden Bridge Trust is part of £85m raised from private sources in an effort to fill the funding gap between public funding allocated to it and the £175m it [...]
DMGT boss Martin Morgan is stepping down at the end of 2016 January 13, 2016 The boss of the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) has announced he is leaving the publishing group at the end of the 2016, after eight years in charge. Martin Morgan, who joined the group in 1989, said he will spend the year executing 2016 priorities, Under his tenure, the website of the Daily Mail newspaper MailOnline [...]
Deceptive demographics: Attitude matters more to marketers January 11, 2016 Here's a shocker for you. There are actually 19 year-old guys who watch Dance Moms, and 73 year-old women who watch Breaking Bad and Avengers,” Netflix’s Todd Yellin told the SxSW conference in Texas last year. Marketers have long recognised the limitations of segmenting consumers demographically. Finding out a customer’s age and gender data, Yellin argued, [...]