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CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Weekly Digest - June 13, 2025

Author

Peter Brendan
June 13, 2025

CMO TLDR: WPP, Agentic AI, Prime Video

Agency Apocalypse

WPP chief steps down as advertising group struggles with the rise of AI

WPP CEO Mark Read is stepping down from the UK's largest advertising group after seven years during which the company's market capitalization halved to about £6 billion and it lost its position as the world's largest ad agency by revenue to French rival Publicis. Read's departure comes as the industry faces upheaval from artificial intelligence, which threatens traditional agency models. At the same time, WPP also contends with the dominance of tech giants like Meta and Alphabet in digital advertising. The CEO will remain in place until year-end as the board searches for a successor to lead the company through one of the most turbulent periods in advertising history.

WPP launches rare public attack on Publicis over ad quality, escalating feud

WPP launched an unprecedented public attack on rival Publicis Groupe, distributing a report to clients accusing Publicis-owned Epsilon of trafficking low-quality ad inventory with below-average viewability rates and excessive "made-for-advertising" sites. Publicis fired back with accusations that WPP deliberately disabled industry-standard protections to fabricate negative results in what it called a "desperate move" lacking integrity. The unusually public clash between two of the world's largest agency holding companies reflects intensifying competition as WPP struggles with lagging growth.

AI Takes Over

Salesforce's New Marketing Platform Tests The Limits Of Agentic AI

Salesforce launched Marketing Cloud Next, a fully autonomous AI marketing platform that can generate campaigns, monitor ad performance, and enable two-way conversations with customers through email and SMS rather than traditional "do not reply" automated messages. The platform aims to provide the level of personalization customers expect from human interactions while automating manual marketing tasks like ROI tracking and link verification. Salesforce CMO Bobby Jania positions the technology as a collaboration between humans who act as "editor-in-chief," providing creative direction, and AI agents that handle execution and performance optimization.

Platform Plays

Amazon Doubles Prime Video Ads to 6 Minutes Per Hour

Amazon has quietly doubled the ad load on Prime Video from its initial promise of 2-3.5 minutes per hour to 4-6 minutes per hour, bringing the streaming service closer to industry standards while creating more inventory that could lower advertising costs. The increase reflects Amazon's effort to balance its massive subscriber base of over 150 million monthly ad-supported viewers with the need to generate more advertising revenue as it scales its streaming business. Ad buyers expect the additional inventory to drive down CPMs by 10-20%, though they're monitoring whether the higher ad load impacts viewer experience and campaign performance.

Snap Dangles Thousands in Free Ad Spend As Potential TikTok Ban Deadline Nears

Snapchat is aggressively offering advertisers up to $10,000 in free ad credits when they commit to spending $50,000 to $100,000 on campaigns, with sales representatives directly positioning the platform as the top beneficiary if TikTok faces another U.S. ban. The push comes as TikTok approaches a June 19 deadline, though President Trump is reportedly expected to delay enforcement again.

By The Numbers

Study Shows Advertising Delivers Triple Returns as Companies Struggle to Prove Marketing Value

A new study by Gain Theory analyzing 75 companies found that advertising delivers 2.9 times the initial investment, with firms spending an average of 3% of revenue on ads but generating 8.7% of total revenue from those campaigns. Companies that measure advertising effectiveness and optimize their spending see year-over-year revenue growth of 0.7 percentage points, which translates to $70 million in additional revenue for a $10 billion company. The research reveals that non-CPG companies significantly outperform consumer packaged goods firms in advertising efficiency, generating 11.9% revenue contribution compared to just 5.5% for CPG brands due to factors like retailer dependence and promotion-heavy strategies.

DoorDash acquired retail search ad startup Symbiosys for $175 million to expand its advertising capabilities beyond its platform while announcing it has surpassed $1 billion in ad revenue over the past 12 months.

The Trade Desk launched its first self-serve SKU-level retail data integrations with Instacart and Ocado, allowing advertisers to access near real-time product sales and customer data directly within their campaign dashboards to target audiences and measure conversions more quickly than traditional post-campaign retail data partnerships.

Amazon launched a free AI-powered video generation tool for sellers that creates eight-second promotional videos from product images, with the company reporting that 50% of products using AI-generated video assets are being advertised for the first time, suggesting smaller retailers now have access to professional-quality marketing materials they previously couldn't afford.

WPP is losing Mars' $1.7 billion media account to Publicis, marking another major client defection just as CEO Mark Read announced his departure following a tenure that saw the company's market cap halve and lose its position as the world's largest ad agency holding company.

The Trade Desk launched its first native app on Snowflake's cloud platform to give advertisers real-time access to SKU-level retail conversion data without requiring data engineering teams, allowing brands to optimize campaigns based on granular sales insights like targeting shoppers who prefer high-pulp orange juice rather than just broad category data.

Key Article Takeaways - TLDR

  • Let AI do the grunt work. Your team should be directing strategy, not just building campaigns. A lot of AI tools are making it so you will become an "editor-in-chief" for the bots. Knowing the right stack of tools is the tricky part, as some of these tools are over hyped.

  • Use the agency drama to negotiate better deals. With WPP publicly attacking Publicis and losing major clients like Mars, this is the time to push for better rates, more transparency, and performance guarantees.

  • Take advantage of Prime Video's inventory surge. Amazon doubled its ad load, which should drop CPMs by 10-20% as supply increases. It's a good opportunity to test video campaigns at a lower cost.