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CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Weekly Digest - February 14, 2025

Author

Peter Brendan
February 14, 2025

CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Earnings Updates

The Trade Desk Misses Revenue Target for First Time in Eight Years; Blames Execution Errors

The Trade Desk (TTD) missed Q4 revenue forecasts for the first time in over eight years. Q4 revenue reached $741 million, up 22% year-over-year but below the projected $759 million. Despite the miss, full-year 2024 revenue hit $2.4 billion, a 26% increase. The Trade Desk has set a Q1 2025 revenue guidance of at least $575 million, projecting a 17% year-over-year growth.

CEO Jeff Green attributed the revenue shortfall to "execution missteps," not market conditions. The company is responding with a major reorganization, streamlining client-facing teams, and doubling down on brand-direct relationships via joint business plans. TTD is also prioritizing internal effectiveness, scaling operations, and adding senior leadership.

IPG Ends 2024 on Soft Note After Q4 Decline

Interpublic Group (IPG) ended Q4 2024 with a 1.8% decline in net organic revenue but managed a slight 0.2% growth for the entire year. With a forecasted 1% to 2% organic revenue drop in 2025 due to client losses and a transformational program promising $250 million in cost savings.

AppLovin Sales Forecast Beats Estimates on Ad Growth Surge

AppLovin's ad sales surged 73% year-on-year, boosting last quarter's results and leading to a strong revenue forecast for the next quarter that surpassed analyst expectations. The mobile game developer and advertiser is focusing on AI-powered ad personalization and expanding into connected TV advertising for direct-to-consumer brands.

Brand Safety

Ads on Child Sexual Abuse Material Spark Senatorial Inquiry

A recent report by Adalytics revealed that programmatic ads were running on pages hosting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal have sent letters to ad tech companies like Amazon, Google, Integral Ad Science, and DoubleVerify, as well as organizations like the MRC and TAG, demanding answers about how these ads bypassed online advertising safeguards. The investigation was triggered when Adalytics, while working on an unrelated project, discovered these instances on file-sharing websites.

Advertising & Marketing Innovation

Disrupting the Metrics in TV Advertising Measurement

In today's fragmented TV advertising landscape, the complexity of measuring viewership has increased with the rise of streaming services, challenging traditional TV ratings that drive ad costs. Nielsen faces competition from firms like VideoAmp, Samba, iSpot, Comscore, and Luminate, which use big data from set-top boxes and smart TVs to estimate ratings, but discrepancies and data integrity issues remain. As the industry seeks a universal metric for reliable measurement, the pressure for accurate, standardized metrics becomes crucial, especially with Nielsen's pricing sometimes exceeding the advertising revenue of cable channels.

Bloomberg Bolsters Contextual Advertising and Expands into FAST Channels

Bloomberg Media is enhancing its advertising strategy by expanding into free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels and launching AdService, which focuses on contextual advertising across TV, streaming, and digital platforms. This approach leverages contextual signals to improve ad resonance, Bloomberg’s existing contextual tool has shown a 3-5% increase in brand lift and video completion rates. Notably, FAST channels capture younger, diverse audiences, offering significant reach and brand visibility, while Bloomberg’s contextual strategies ensure connection with high-value, decision-maker audiences.

Agency News

AI-Powered Marketing Revolution at WPP

WPP is revolutionizing the advertising landscape with a $300 million AI investment in its platform, WPP Open. This initiative merges creativity, media, and strategy for a more integrated marketing approach. This initiative blurs traditional boundaries by using AI to enhance efficiency and creativity, allowing teams to collaborate in real-time and utilize synthetic focus groups for audience insights. With this move, WPP sets a new industry standard, as Google Cloud recognizes it as a leading example of large-scale AI implementation, showcasing a transformative shift towards AI fluency in marketing roles.

Netflix is expanding its programmatic advertising platform to Europe, offering buyers more control and targeting options. However, it faces pressure to lower prices amid a competitive streaming ad market dominated by cheaper options like Amazon.

Women’s Sports Connect offers brands integrated marketing solutions spanning media buys, content production, athlete endorsements, and event sponsorships.

The IAB Tech Lab is developing a standardized Conversion API (CAPI) to simplify data sharing between advertisers and publishers, reducing the current friction and cost of custom integrations.

YouTube, where TV screens are now the dominant viewing platform in the US, is doubling down on podcasts, creator tools, and accessibility features like auto-dubbing to capitalize on its reach across major live events.

  • For brand safety, prioritize a whitelist strategy. In programmatic's power-law landscape, a focused whitelist (e.g., 1,000-10,000 domains) delivers scale while mitigating long-tail risk. Use AI to audit current domain exposure and proactively address brand safety issues.

  • ‘A man with one watch knows what time it is, and a man with two watches could never be sure.’ Use a single, reliable measurement currency to avoid conflicting results and ensure clear performance evaluation.

  • Optimize targeting strategies to balance reach and audience specificity, avoiding over-targeting. Consider FAST networks to reach younger audiences.

  • Leverage AI for marketing personas, allowing for faster testing of ideas with synthetic focus groups. Don’t have access to WPP Open? We built a tool for doing this with audiences and creatives.