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First up: Don’t miss our webinar this Thursday on the future of ad targeting featuring execs from Mars Petcare, The Trade Desk, R/GA, and The Washington Post. Details here.
Eli Joshua Ade/HBO
Advertisers are banking on live events
HBO had to delay all-important screenings to promote “Lovecraft Country” last summer due to spikes in coronavirus cases.
This year, the entertainment giant found a pandemic-safe way to promote its content, creating an interactive display, HBO Max Orbit, for the virtual SXSW Festival and select AT&T stores.
Events are a significant part of many marketers’ budgets, and many of them are ready to jump back into live events as communities reopen, Patrick Coffee reports.
But spending is unlikely to approach pre-pandemic levels, and health risks remain a big concern.
Some marketers are, variously, seeking exit clauses to avoid a repeat of last year’s losses, and plan to make virtual events a part of their approach.
“We ended up losing a ton of money with things that had to be cancelled and other unseen costs,” Colleen Bisconti, VP of events and conferences at IBM, told Patrick.
Extreme Reach, a company that helps brands buy and plan TV and video ads, is acquiring rival Adstream, in hopes of giving clients a competitive advantage.
Behind the news:
Advertisers are increasingly looking to buy TV ads with digital-like precision.
Companies that help marketers buy and measure their TV advertising are seen as acquisition targets and growth in adtech stocks, SPACs, and private equity have fueled interest in adtech.
Ad giant Omnicom Group created a new data-driven marketing unit, Omni Health, aimed at healthcare clients like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, Tanya Dua reports.
Key things to know:
Agencies have souped up their data tools in recent years to help advertisers precisely target people and fend off consultancies like Accenture Interactive and Deloitte.
Omnicom for its part says it’s spent tens of millions of dollars to build Omni Health.
Advertising agencies are making a big play for healthcare ad dollars, one of the few areas of ad spending that’s held up in the pandemic.
But Omnicom has plenty of competition from other ad and PR firms like IPGand W2O that are making similar bets.
