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CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Weekly Digest - March 14, 2025

Author

Peter Brendan
March 14, 2025

CMO TLDR: Retail Media, Pharma, and AI Challenges

Retail Media & Commerce

Retail Media's $140 Billion Budget Battle Creates Corporate Dysfunction

Internal power struggles between marketing, media, sales, and commerce teams are complicating retail media investments as the sector grows to over $140 billion in global ad spend, according to industry executives. This organizational dysfunction stems from retailers like Target and Walmart leveraging their first-party data into booming advertising businesses—with Target's retail media unit growing 25% to $649 million and Walmart's ad business increasing 27% to $4.4 billion in 2024—while brands struggle to determine whether these budgets should come from traditional marketing or sales departments.

Programmatic & Measurement

DSP Direct Routes Still Minor Revenue Stream for Publishers Despite Growth

Publishers are increasingly evaluating direct-to-DSP connections like The Trade Desk's OpenPath. The Guardian saw it become a top-three supply-side platform within weeks of integration, despite Daily Mail executive Jeremy Gan noting such connections represent "just a trickle" of the remaining 10% of publisher revenue. As sell-side curation gains prominence despite transparency concerns, publishers at AdMonsters' Sell Side Summit emphasized the need to prioritize tech partners offering optimal yield while moving away from resellers that agencies are increasingly avoiding.

Ad Industry Grapples With Transparency After CSAM Report

Major DSPs are responding differently to advertiser demands for URL-level campaign reporting following a bombshell study that exposed child sexual abuse material monetization through ad tech vendors. While Amazon plans to add page-level transparency tools and issue refunds to affected advertisers, The Trade Desk confirmed it isn't building URL-level reporting, despite its Raw Event Data Stream theoretically providing such capabilities to clients with sufficient resources and expertise.

Bain, WPP Scrap Kantar IPO Plans in Favor of Break-Up Sale

Bain Capital and WPP are abandoning plans to pursue an IPO for market research company Kantar and will instead break up and sell the business in parts, reflecting the continued weakness in global public offering markets. The owners already sold Kantar's media division to HIG Capital in January for approximately $1 billion, with the fast-growing Numerator unit potentially next on the block as early as this year. Kantar, which reported $2.5 billion in adjusted gross revenues through the first nine months of 2024 (up 3% year-over-year), was initially acquired by Bain in 2019 at a $4 billion valuation, with WPP retaining a minority stake.

Pharma

Trump Administration Considers Pharma TV Ad Ban

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may push for a ban on pharmaceutical television advertising, which accounted for over one-third of drugmakers' $34.7 billion advertising spend last year. Industry experts suggest pharmaceutical companies would likely shift billions in advertising dollars toward education-based marketing and healthcare provider partnerships rather than cutting marketing budgets. Nearly half of U.S. adults oppose pharmaceutical TV commercials, while only 16% support them, indicating limited public resistance to potential regulatory changes.

Artificial Intelligence

AI Controversy Overshadows Volvo's Saudi Campaign

Volvo's "Come Back Stronger" campaign in Saudi Arabia faced backlash for being entirely AI-generated, with no actual Volvo vehicles featured, highlighting the industry's struggle with AI disclosure. Critics attacked the unnatural imagery and perceived threat to human creativity, despite the ad's alignment with Saudi Vision 2030 initiatives. Author Kate Watts argues that the controversy demonstrates that when AI becomes the headline rather than remaining a behind-the-scenes tool, it undermines storytelling effectiveness—a lesson similarly faced by Coca-Cola's AI-generated holiday ad that was initially well-received until its AI origins were revealed.

Free ad-supported streaming TV channels have almost doubled since mid-2023 to more than 1,610 across key markets, with the U.S. leading the expansion, while reality programming has grown 626% and sports channels have more than doubled, according to Nielsen's Gracenote research.

The Guardian has become the latest publisher to join The Trade Desk's OpenPath platform, citing sustainability concerns and programmatic sales growth across global markets as key drivers while potentially complicating its relationship with publisher alliance Ozone.

The IAB Tech Lab has opened public comment until April 10 on Extended Content Identifiers for OpenRTB, a system that would give advertisers more granular information about streaming content while allowing publishers to control how much show-level data they share. The proposal aims to boost the $30 billion streaming TV ad market by enabling programmatic buyers to make informed decisions about ad placement while addressing privacy concerns.

CMO average tenure rose to 4.3 years in 2024 at Fortune 500 companies, with 65% moving to promotions or lateral positions & 10% becoming CEOs. 53% of CMOs are female. Despite a decrease in enterprise-wide marketing leadership, marketing's strategic importance is reflected in expanding roles.

Article Takeaways - TLDR

  • A potential ban on pharmaceutical TV ads by the Trump administration would force pharmaceutical firms to reallocate budgets, likely driving increased investment in digital and educational marketing. This shift may exert upward pressure on digital prices, but potential deals to be had on linear.

  • As retail media continues to grow, creating internal collaboration between marketing, media, sales, and commerce teams is crucial. This fragmentation presents an opportunity for agencies to offer strategic guidance on process optimization or be the place to centralize retail media budgets.

  • While AI-generated content offers efficiency gains, brands should proceed cautiously. Over-reliance on artificial intelligence in creative campaigns may erode consumer trust, underscoring the enduring value of authentic brand messaging.