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CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Weekly Digest - March 28, 2025

Author

Peter Brendan
March 28, 2025

CMO TLDR: Alt IDs, AI, and the ‘McScore’

Alternative IDs

Ad Tech's Lukewarm Pivot: Alternative IDs Stall in Post-Cookie Landscape

The advertising industry has reached an unexpected impasse in cookie-alternative adoption, with alternative identifiers now present in 70% of cookie-less bid transactions, yet media buyers showing minimal urgency to fully transition due to Google's delayed third-party cookie cutoff. Despite the technological readiness, with companies like Tinuiti reporting alternative identifiers in the majority of their streaming TV buys, market inertia persists as advertisers prioritize performance over philosophical shifts in targeting technologies. GroupM's Rory Latham notes that cookies still dominate up to 50% of programmatic impressions while media buyers explore alternative data strategies, including retail media networks and contextual targeting as stopgap solutions.

Artificial Intelligence

AI's Advertising Inflection Point: Slow Adoption, Big Potential

The advertising industry stands at a critical juncture of AI integration, with most companies struggling to fully leverage artificial intelligence across media campaigns despite recognizing its transformative potential. As agencies and brands navigate this technological frontier, a few insights from the report:

  • 70% of agencies, brands, and publishers have not fully integrated AI in media planning and analysis

  • Agencies and publishers are twice as likely to have scaled AI compared to brands

  • Half of the companies not currently using AI expect full-scale adoption by 2026

Marketers Revolt Against AI-Driven Media Buying Platforms

Advertisers are staging a quiet rebellion against Google's Performance Max and Meta's Advantage+ AI solutions, cutting spend and expressing growing frustration with the opaque, unpredictable nature of AI-powered media buying. Despite platforms reporting robust growth, with Meta's Advantage+ hitting a $20 billion annual run rate and 95% of retail advertisers using Google's Performance Max, marketers are increasingly concerned about transparency, brand safety, and diminishing returns. The pushback signals a critical inflection point in digital advertising, where the promise of AI-driven efficiency is being weighed against the fundamental need for control and understanding of where advertising dollars are being deployed.

Measurement

McDonald's Insights in Streaming Ad Measurement with Innovative Analytics

McDonald's is pioneering a sophisticated approach to digital video advertising measurement, partnering with Publicis and The Trade Desk to develop custom tracking tools that maximize marketing effectiveness across streaming platforms. Through an insightful campaign analysis, the company discovered that broadcast video on demand (BVOD) drove 3.9% exclusive audience reach while ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) generated 4.1%, demonstrating minimal audience overlap and unique reach across platforms. The fast-food giant's innovative "McScore" metric combines CPM, ad completion, visibility, and attention rates, enabling real-time campaign optimization that delivered a 46% performance improvement and 28% CPM reduction in a recent French market test.

Muddy Waters Research alleges that AppLovin inflates its e-commerce sales by using retargeting tactics and violating third-party platform terms of service. The report claims that approximately 52% of AppLovin’s e-commerce sales are from retargeting, with only 25-35% incrementality, and that the company faces potential deplatforming due to its data collection practices.

iSpot launches Outcomes at Scale, a streamlined advertising measurement tool developed in partnership with Paramount that automates cross-platform ad performance tracking. The solution promises to simplify complex attribution processes, allowing marketers to access real-time campaign insights across linear and connected TV channels with unprecedented speed and precision.

The IAB Tech Lab's recent event highlighted the advertising industry's ongoing challenge of balancing data privacy with effective targeting, with participants exploring new technologies that can help maintain consumer privacy while delivering advertising insights. Key discussions centered on initiatives like the Trusted Server project and the use of privacy-enhancing technologies, reflecting a growing industry focus on giving publishers more control and maintaining consumer trust in an increasingly regulated digital landscape.

Meta is aggressively entering the controversial principal-based trading market, engaging with agency holding companies to buy inventory in bulk and resell at a markup, a strategic move aimed at securing ad revenue and maintaining market leverage amid uncertain economic conditions. The initiative, while potentially lucrative, reignites long-standing industry debates about transparency, with critics arguing the practice risks muddying client relationships and potentially undermining the true value of media trading.

The California Privacy Protection Agency slapped American Honda Motor Co. with a $632,500 fine for failing to secure legally required data protection contracts with ad tech vendors, underscoring the growing regulatory scrutiny of digital advertising's complex data ecosystem. Advertisers are now on notice: mapping data flows, establishing comprehensive vendor agreements, and leveraging industry-standard privacy frameworks like the IAB Multi-State Privacy Agreement are no longer optional but critical compliance imperatives.

Warner Bros. Discovery has strategically deployed The Trade Desk's OpenPath for its web news properties, particularly CNN, to overcome brand safety challenges and drive advertiser demand through enhanced transparency and direct bid access. The media giant is methodically testing the platform's performance across its display advertising ecosystem, currently limiting the integration to web news while carefully evaluating its potential expansion to connected TV properties.

A new Boathouse study reveals a nuanced landscape for Chief Marketing Officers, with 71% receiving top grades from CEOs yet struggling to fully deliver on transformation strategies amid complex business challenges. Despite improving trust and perception, CMOs face mounting pressure to bridge strategic gaps, with only 45% considered best-in-class and ongoing skepticism about their ability to drive meaningful organizational change in an AI-driven marketplace.

Omnicom Media Group delivered a robust performance in 2024, generating $7.659 billion in net new billings, with PHD and OMD media networks driving significant growth. Publicis Media posted a $6.499 billion gain, and GroupM gained $4.523 billion, while PHD claimed the top spot among discrete media agency networks in net new billings.

Key Article Takeaways - TLDR

  • Alternative IDs: Alt IDs need to demonstrate clear performance advantages of alternative IDs to overcome current market hesitation and being considered just hype.

  • AI Adoption: Potential vs. Reality: Agencies and Brands should prioritize investment in AI education and infrastructure. The gap between recognizing AI's potential and its actual implementation needs to be closed to maintain a competitive edge. Brands should continue to dive into the operational benefits before leveraging AI for creative use cases.

  • AI-Driven Media Buying: Brands and agencies must demand transparency and control from AI-driven media buying. Reject black-box solutions lacking verifiable results. Claims of improved ROAS are insufficient; demonstrate tangible impact on the bottom line, the metric by which CMOs are ultimately judged.

  • Measurement: Adopt advanced, customized measurement techniques, like McDonald's "McScore", to better evaluate and optimize streaming ad campaign performance. Understanding the unique reach of BVOD and AVOD is crucial for more efficient ad spend.