WPP, the world's biggest advertising company, said net sales fell 3.3% in the first quarter, with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic dragging it down by 7.9% in March alone, prompting it to cut more costs. It said it expected the impact from COVID-19 to increase in the short term, but could not say by how much.
Long rows of desks may be out, work stations sheathed with glass sneeze guards may be in. As he prepares to return thousands of staff to offices across Italy, Davide Sala, Pirelli's HR boss, is applying practices already adopted in the tyre company's operations in China. The changes included temperature tests, face masks and more space between desks that allowed the group to resume at least some office work.
While many states are still on lockdown, some have opened up and overall businesses are working through planning their COVID-19 road to recovery.
U.S. prosecutors on Friday charged the founder and former owner of a Hollywood movie production and distribution company with defrauding a BlackRock Inc investment fund out of about$14 million to pay for luxuries including a Beverly Hills mansion. William Sadleir, 66, of Beverly Hills, California, was charged with two counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft after inducing the closed-end BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust Fund to invest $75 million in his Aviron Group. Sadleir allegedly promised BlackRock its money would support his films, including through the purchase of $27 million in pre-paid media credits, or "up fronts," with the GroupM affiliate of WPP Plc, the world's largest advertising company.
Long rows of desks may be out, work stations sheathed with glass sneeze guards may be in. As he prepares to return thousands of staff to offices across Italy, Davide Sala, Pirelli's HR boss, is applying practices already adopted in the tyre company's operations in China. The changes included temperature tests, face masks and more space between desks that allowed the group to resume at least some office work.
We hate to say this but, we told you so. On February 27th we published an article with the title Recession is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW and predicted a US recession when the S&P 500 Index was trading at the 3150 level. We also told you to short the market and buy […]
St. Petersburg-based media company Triad, formerly known as Triad Retail Media, has closed, according to its parent company. The company that specializes in digital retail media was founded in 2004 and racked up customers like Walmart, Sam's Club and CVS. "The dramatic changes in the retail industry, coupled with the economic conditions triggered by the global pandemic, have brought us to the difficult decision to close Triad, a retail media business based in St. Petersburg," a spokeswoman for GroupM, Triad's parent company, said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
WPP (NYSE: WPP) today reported its 2020 First Quarter Trading Update.
Lysol is starring with celebrities and rock-bottom prices in the $8 trillion global travel industry's pitch to get people back on the road and in the air. What was scrubbed from view now leads marketing campaigns as cleanliness is tops for travelers in the coronavirus era, marketing experts said. As the summer vacation season kicks off, airlines and hotel chains are racing to brand themselves as spotless, in efforts to wipe out memories of grimy seat-back tray tables and bed bug-ridden rooms for travelers fearing exposure to the coronavirus.
WPP CEO Mark Read joins Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi and Heidi Chung to discuss how companies are changing their marketing amid the coronavirus outbreak.
WPP PLC (WPP), the world’s largest advertising company, said it was suspending its dividend and share buyback plan, and withdrawing its guidance for 2020 as the coronavirus outbreak induced “significant uncertainty” leading to an increasing number of client cancellations.“We expect our performance in March in markets experiencing significant COVID-19 outbreaks to be weaker than in January and February, impacted by government restrictions on movement and the consequent reduction in economic activity,” WPP said in a statement.WPP’s shares have plunged to $31.88 from around $70 at the beginning of this year. (See WPP stock analysis on TipRanks) TipRanks’ database shows financial bloggers have a bullish outlook on the stock.The London-based advertising giant said it was taking additional measures to cope with cash flow and profitability, which include cost reductions and spending cuts as well as tight controls on working capital. The measures are expected to generate annual savings of £700 million - £800 million in 2020.WPP reported that as of December 31, 2019 it had £3 billion in cash and total liquidity, including undrawn credit lines of £4.8 billion. Net debt was £1.5 billion, down from £4 billion a year earlier.Moreover the ad giant said it was producing health campaigns for governments and clients around the world including in Britain, where it launched an information service on WhatsApp. In addition, WPP said that 55% of its employees in China were back at their offices after health restrictions were lifted.Related News: Cytosorbents’ Blood Purification Technology Could Play Important Role in Fighting COVID-19; Analyst Says ‘Buy’ Wyndham Hotels Plans to Cut 270 Jobs to Counter Coronavirus Effects 2 “Strong Buy” Stocks With Solid Long-Term Upside More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * Shaw Communications Reports Strong Earnings, Branded ‘Safe Haven’ Stock By Top Analyst * Amazon Begins Building Covid-19 Testing Facility * Chesapeake Energy Sets Date For Reverse Stock Split, Stock Down 80% YTD * Prudential Financial Announces $1.9 Billion Sale of Prudential of Korea
The cancellation of major sporting events and the decimation of the luxury, entertainment and travel industries is delivering a hammer blow to a global advertising industry that was already reeling from years of tech-led turmoil. Advertising executives told Reuters that clients are pulling campaigns, photo shoots for glossy magazines are off and major brands are cutting budgets to conserve cash after the outbreak upended the way consumers go about their daily lives. The sudden withdrawal of a chunk of the $600 billon of pure advertising money that goes via agencies onto media platforms such as Facebook and Google, broadcasters, magazines and billboards will be felt far and wide.
(Bloomberg) -- Readers are flocking to news sites for the latest on Covid-19. Advertisers are running the other way.As news editors do everything to harness public interest in the worst public health crisis in more than a generation, their main source of income is in freefall, with brands pulling ads from news sites, papers and magazines.To some extent that’s normal: With businesses hoarding cash just to stay afloat, marketing campaigns are a low priority. But a bad situation is being made a whole lot worse by advertising “blacklists” — sets of keywords that stop ads appearing next to certain categories of news that are considered a turn-off by brand managers. Because so much coverage now touches on coronavirus, one of the biggest stories of the century is turning into an advertising no-go zone.The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a trade group, surveyed U.S. web publishers in early April and found that news organizations were twice as likely to have ads blocked because of keyword blacklisting.News executives, and even some advertising experts, say the lists can be arbitrary, unfair and often nonsensical: there’s little evidence that readers are less responsive to an ad for shampoo or a car hire service just because they’re sitting alongside a “bad news” story. What’s more, they’re killing news.“We’re in danger of losing some of the most trusted publishers we have in the U.K. in the coming months,” said Tracey de Groose, executive chairman of British news industry marketing body Newsworks. “The unintended consequence of this is the commercial censorship of journalism.”Newsworks calculated that Covid-19 blacklists are set to cost British news brands more than 50 million pounds ($61.7 million) in the next three months — a potential lifeline for newsrooms already slashing costs to survive. It said its members already lost 170 million pounds last year from an ever-growing list of common news words that brands avoid, such as “terrorism” and even “Brexit.” Integral Ad Science Inc., one of a complex array of tech firms that influence where ads appear online, said marketers have begun to address the problem — specific coronavirus-related keyword blocking has fallen by 80% since mid-March in the U.S. and 77% in the U.K., according to IAS Chief Executive Officer Lisa Utzschneider. Prior to that, marketers requested blanket bans on ads appearing next to content with words like “coronavirus” or “pandemic.”In the U.K., news organizations have spent more than a month lobbying ad executives to stop them blocking ads near virus coverage, and even drafted in the government to add its weight to the campaign, to little avail. There’s yet to be any rebound in income for publishers, said de Groose at Newsworks. That’s galling for news sites that have seen readership more than double in some content categories in Europe, according to audience data firm Comscore.In a follow-up IAB survey last week, 18% of news publishers reported that blacklist restrictions had loosened in their second quarter planning. More than half said nothing had changed.Companies that provide “brand safety” lists often use outdated terms and obscure how their keyword targeting works, said Nandini Jammi, a marketing industry advocate. “These are not made clear to advertisers,” she said. “Everyone is doing it. No one is thinking about it.” At the other end of the chain, news publishers struggle to find out which brands are blocking what, making it harder to hold the brands to account. The companies that administer the ad blocking profit from each block, so have little incentive to help. WPP agency GroupM said it’s trying to get brand marketing teams to making their blacklists more intelligent so more ads reach trusted news sources.Rather than blocking “Covid-19,” they block a combination of words such as “Covid-19-Miracle Cure” or “Covid-19-Refrigerated Truck” so that ads don’t appear alongside irresponsible or particularly unpleasant news stories, said John Montgomery, the head of GroupM’s global brand safety practice.“The technology is not the enemy,” he said. “It’s the way we use it.” Opaque MarketUnpicking the chain of arrangements that are pulling advertising away from news is complex because publishers are the last link in a vast online ecosystem. Digital ads are created by agencies at global companies such as WPP Plc and transmitted via technology platforms including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and intermediaries like IAS and DoubleVerify. An ad flows through a warren of automated marketplaces and is sold a split-second after you click a link to the page where you see it. A myriad of suppliers trade and verify the content, while others gather data to target it better. It’s turned what used to be a simple agreement between a paper’s ad department and a brand marketing representative into an opaque process that’s dissipated responsibility and accountability.Google rejects any blame for the boycott of Covid-related news, saying there are no technical or policy reasons to stop publishers monetizing coronavirus-related content on its platforms.“We are in constant discussions with our publishing partners, advertisers and agencies on how we can continue to support a sustainable future for news,” said a Google spokesperson. Ad dollars have been draining from the news business for a decade for reasons that reach beyond the pandemic, said Montgomery at GroupM. As the big social media platforms developed sophisticated filters to keep brands safe from harmful or toxic content, they’ve captured more of the ad dollars that once went to news. The result is that “media planners have been trained not to need news any more,” he said.News organizations such as New York Times Co. and Nikkei Inc.’s Financial Times have cut dependence on ads by moving to reader subscriptions or memberships. Models are also emerging in which tech giants share more revenue, like Apple Inc.’s subscription News+ service or Facebook Inc’s agreement to pay trusted publishers. Ad-funded news organizations pushed to the brink by the virus-induced ad slump are trying to innovate their way out of danger. Some publishers are pitching ad slots next to “good news” stories from the pandemic, relying on technology that can scan language and find the happier articles.One of Britain’s biggest newspaper companies, Reach Plc, has teamed up with International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Inc. to boost its language processing software and direct ads to these stories. “Coronavirus articles that have a positive sentiment are good for your brand,” said Damon Reeve, chief executive officer of the Ozone Project, an ad platform set up in 2018 by several U.K. news publishers including the Telegraph and the Guardian.For all those efforts, ad blacklists will be hard to banish as long as there are news themes that brands want to avoid.“Yes, ‘coronavirus’ has been the number-one blocked keyword,” said IAS’s Utzschneider. “But before that, it was ‘Trump’.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc.’s revenue held up better than expected in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the company warned that the worst of the slowdown in ad spending isn’t over, raising the prospect of a bigger hit across the digital-advertising market.Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner noted the “potential for an even more severe advertising industry contraction.” His prediction is significant, given that Facebook accepts ads from all industries, and owns apps that now reach 3 billion people every month. There’s been a particular drop-off in the travel and auto industries, he said on Wednesday’s earnings call.Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive officer, underlined the concern, saying that if shelter-in-place orders end too soon, the economic fallout could be even more pronounced. “I worry that this could be worse than at least some people are predicting,” Zuckerberg said.The warnings from the world’s largest social network echoed those heard in earlier calls from Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Snap Inc.: While the first quarter remained upbeat, the real impact could come in a few months. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said the second quarter will be “difficult,” while Snap finance chief Derek Andersen last week spoke of “factors beyond our control.” Twitter Inc. on Thursday reported a 27% drop in sales from March 11 through the end of the quarter and said April showed similar results. The company said that improving its ad products is now a “top priority.”The comments from across the advertising-dependent part of the tech industry also portend the beginning of a trend -- for the first time, an uptick in user attention to an app doesn’t necessarily mean that ad growth will follow. They also indicate the visibility these companies have into the broader economy, where advertising revenues are a leading indicator of optimism about the future.During the Great Recession of the late 2000s, overall ad spending declined for two years straight, with annual digital advertising revenue dropping in 2009 for the first and only time, according to EMarketer. But most of the advertising industry thinks the coronavirus impact will be worse, the researcher said, citing a recent study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.Facebook reported an 18% increase in first-quarter revenue, showing advertising demand was strong before the Covid-19 pandemic hit budgets. The results include just a few weeks in March when coronavirus lockdowns began to hammer the economy. The company also said business was steady in the first few weeks of April, sparking a surge in its shares in late trading.“After the initial steep decrease in advertising revenue in March, we have seen signs of stability,” the company said in a statement.Like Google and Snapchat, Facebook said it’s seeing a surge of usage and engagement as millions of people shelter in place and look for entertainment and ways to keep in touch online. Daily users of all Facebook’s apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, averaged 2.36 billion in March, up from 2.26 billion in December, the company said. Facebook’s core social network now has 1.73 billion daily users, compared with 1.66 billion during the final month of 2019.For Facebook, the spike in usage will likely have less impact on its business than in prior quarters. Many of the company’s most popular features during the pandemic – including voice calling and direct messaging – are not areas where the company makes significant revenue. Facebook also gets more than half of its sales from small businesses, a group that is hit especially hard by the Covid-19 lockdown and recession.Snap may be more insulated from the downturn than Facebook and Twitter because it doesn’t have as many small advertisers, Jim Cridlin, global head of innovation and partnerships at WPP Plc’s Mindshare media agency, said last week. Though the company didn’t provide forecasts for the current period, it said advertising revenue was still growing, albeit at a slower pace.For its part, Google, which is heavily dependent on search and display advertising, has a more diversified business and therefore may have a greater cushion against a further slump in marketing budgets. Shares jumped following its own earnings report, which showed strong growth in cloud computing and at the YouTube digital-video site.The tech giants are navigating the pullback from advertising as their workers mostly remain at home, but they’re not advocating for a return to normal. When governments say it’s time to return to work, Facebook is likely to advise its employees to stay at home, Wehner said. Since the company can still ship products remotely, there’s no use overloading public transportation systems. Meanwhile, Facebook is thinking about how to reconfigure its offices, to ensure that once people are back, they are working at a safe distance from colleagues. “I think we’ll be more cautious,” Wehner said on Bloomberg Television.(Updates with Twitter results in fourth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Ogilvy Health, one of Ogilvy’s three global practices (www.ogilvy.com), today announced Nelson Figueiredo, the agency’s VP, Director of Technology, has been named as one of the 2020 PM360 ELITE 100 by healthcare marketing industry trade magazine PM360. Now in its sixth year, the PM360 ELITE (Exceptional • Leaders • Innovators • Transformers • Entrepreneurs) represent the most influential people in the healthcare industry today. The awards honor individuals who have made a significant impact in the life sciences field throughout their careers.
WPP (NYSE:WPP) and SuperAwesome, the leading kidtech platform, today announced a partnership to advance the standards of privacy for children in the global digital ecosystem.
WPP (NYSE: WPP) today issued the following update related to COVID-19.
(Bloomberg) -- Google and other digital advertising companies are seeing revenue growth wither as marketers slash spending ahead of an expected recession triggered by the coronavirus.The global pandemic and the ensuing slump in economic activity is crushing several industries that have been big buyers of Google and Facebook Inc. ads, including online travel agents, automakers, restaurants and retail.“I’m hearing some big numbers, with ad spending down 30% to 50% across the board,” said Rob Griffin, founder of digital ad consulting firm G5 Futures. Some marketers will slash budgets by 80% or 90%, while others may stop for a while if they’re in sectors that are particularly hard hit, he added.Millions of people are sheltering at home and spending more time on social media, video streaming and other online services. That’s increasing the amount of digital ad space, but demand for those marketing spots is weak, so prices are falling.“The consumption is irrelevant, it’s completely irrelevant,” said Brian Wieser, president of business intelligence for GroupM, the media buying arm of advertising giant WPP Plc. “The total amount of money available is independent of viewership trends.”Facebook warned on Tuesday that its ad business is weakening in countries that are aggressively fighting the virus. Many of its services are being used more, such as messaging, but they don’t run ads, the company added. The day before, Twitter Inc. said usage has jumped, but global advertising is curbed, forcing the social-media company to slash its sales forecast and project a loss in the current quarter.“The sudden impact of the COVID-19 virus will ripple through the ad market,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Moffettnathanson LLC, wrote in a note to investors. “Given the sheer size of digital ad spending in today’s marketplace (i.e., more than 50% of all ad spend is now digital), we would expect other digital platforms to see significant deceleration in ad revenues in the coming months.”“We would suggest investors avoid catching falling knives at Google and Facebook,” he added.Google declined to comment on its ad business on Tuesday. On the company’s YouTube video service, viewing has jumped in the past week, but CPMs, the industry’s way of measuring ad prices, fell as much as 8%, according to one digital media executive who asked not to be identified discussing private figures.Shares of Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook are down about 25% since the middle of February, so some of the digital ad downturn may already been priced in. Facebook stock dipped about 1% in extended trading after its warning. Alphabet was little changed.Longer term, Google and Facebook have big cash hoards and little debt, so they can withstand a deep recession, according to Bloomberg Intelligence internet analyst Jitendra Waral.The last major economic downturn was a boon to these companies. The 2008 financial crisis triggered a similar slump in advertising, but much of that was focused on traditional media. Online platforms took advantage of the moment, and pitched their ads as cheaper, more-targeted alternatives. Now, digital ads take in more than $300 billion a year from the largest corporations to the smallest businesses. Google and Facebook account for more than half of that, according to research firm EMarketer.Singapore Shuts Bars; India on Nationwide Lockdown: Virus UpdateLast week, as the scale of the crisis hit home, ad agency executives worked the phones, trying to help clients figure out what to do next. Some pulled out completely while others raced to adjust the tone of their ads.“You have industries that were extremely active as of a week ago come to a screeching halt: restaurants, travel, retail,” said Doug Rozen, chief media officer at advertising agency 360i. Other companies are still spending, but being more conservative, he added.Google and Facebook derive much of their revenue from small businesses, thousands of which could shut if a deep recession sets in. Both internet companies offer self-service ad platforms that can be switched off quickly.“Advertising is the easiest expense to cut, you can literally log into Google Ads and turn it off and start saving money,” said Ari Paparo, head of digital ad firm Beeswax Inc. and a former Google executive.Amazon.com Inc. recently cut back drastically on how much money it spends on Google ads. The online retailer is one of Google’s largest ad buyers, usually snapping up product listing ads to lure web shoppers to Amazon.Expedia Group Inc. and Booking Holdings Inc. each spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year marketing on Google, but these online travel agents have been hammered by the abrupt halt in flights, business trips and vacations.Booking Withdraws Already-Bleak Forecast, Citing CoronavirusBooking Holdings has pulled back “materially” on brand advertising, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney wrote in a recent research note after meeting executives from the online travel company. The industry accounts for about 10% to 15% of Google’s ad revenue, with Booking and Expedia accounting for about 3% each, Mahaney estimates.Even businesses that don’t sell through the internet often purchase Google ads to encourage people to visit their brick-and-mortar locations. Last week, Being Yoga, a yoga studio about 15 miles south of San Francisco, was still buying Google search ads, based on the query “yoga near me,” despite being closed. Bloomberg News contacted the business, which said it had forgotten to switch the ads off.Retailers often buy Google local inventory ads that show online shoppers whether products are stocked in nearby stores. With many non-essential retailers shutting locations, demand for these ads may slow.“If stores are closed, we absolutely recommend they turn off local inventory ads,” a Google spokeswoman said.Real numbers showing the virus’ impact are beginning to emerge from China, which was hit first and shut down travel and non-essential businesses weeks ago.Advertising sales on China’s big digital platforms are projected to drop 20% to 30% in the first quarter of the year, WPP’s Wieser said. Automobile ads slumped 79% in China in February, a far steeper decline than any time during the 2008 financial crisis, he also noted. Most Google services are unavailable in mainland China, but in the rest of the world, automakers are another big ad customer.Even industries that are seeing higher demand, like consumer goods, are unlikely to advertise more right now. “Why would you advertise toilet paper right now? It’s not helpful,” Wieser said. “They want to curtail demand.”(Updates with YouTube ad prices in ninth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Yahoo Finance chats about the state of the advertising industry with its largest player. WPP CEO Mark Read shares his thoughts amidst the coronavirus pandemic.