Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i Adweek

Out of a global workforce of 3.38 billion people, almost half (1.57 billion) are freelance, according to the World Bank. Those part-timers now include senior marketers. Being a fractional CMO is attractive to very experienced marketers, who can decide how and when they work, which better aligns with their personal and career interests. “There’s value in honing your skills as a CPG marketer, but also in applying a fresh perspective to an entirely different category. A fractional CMO role can allow you to do exactly that: take on a new challenge in some of your time and have a big impact on an organization without it becoming your only focus,” explained marketing guru Jerry Daykin. Meanwhile, startups that were previously unable to afford a highly experienced marketer are finding they…

Thanks to his background in theoretical physics, Jonathan Roberts may be one of the few people alive who can credibly claim to understand ad tech. Before joining About.com in 2013, the University of Oxford academic spent more than a decade as a researcher, making dark matter predictions for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and cosmic ray predictions for the AMS particle physics detector on the International Space Station. He now serves as the chief innovation officer for Dotdash Meredith, overseeing research, data science and open-market revenue operations. Over the past year, he has played an instrumental role in spearheading the development of D/Cipher, the sophisticated contextual advertising product that helped the behemoth media company grow its digital ad revenue nearly 10% last quarter. Roberts has taken an unorthodox route…

SUCCESSION SCRIBE Jesse Armstrong, ADWEEK’s 2024 TV Creator of the Year, never had a clear path to comedy TV royalty. Armstrong, who grew up in Oswestry in Shropshire, England, attended the University of Manchester and took on American studies as an undergraduate. Later, he worked as a researcher for a member of Parliament before realizing a career in politics wasn’t for him. So Armstrong did the next best thing—tried his luck at comedy. The Succession showrunner had an accomplished career long before Logan Roy ever made the future CEO of Waystar Royco oink for sausages. Among his many projects, he cocreated and co-wrote nine seasons of Channel 4’s BAFTA-winning comedy Peep Show, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for writing the film In the Loop. Of course, Armstrong…

EATER EDITOR IN CHIEF Stephanie Wu was on parental leave when she saw Carmy and Sydney’s Chaos Menu concept come to life in FX’s hit show The Bear (“Sundae,” Season 2, Episode 3, June 2023). But that didn’t stop the celebration. While the chaos concept has been around for a while, it was an Eater article by Jaya Saxena in September 2022 that helped catapult it into wider cultural consciousness. What Eater earlier described as “a brash new type of cooking, part neo-fusion, part middle finger” rippled out online, with millions of views on related TikTok videos, plus features in Tatler, Food & Wine, Better Homes & Gardens, HuffPost and more. But that’s just one way that Wu—along with a team of 75 staffers across 23 cities—ensures the Eater brand…

FEW PUBLISHERS are quite so distinct as The Guardian. The news organization, originally founded in 1821, is wholly owned by a financial trust, levies a “nagwall” to encourage reader support, refuses to work with oil and gas advertisers, and caters to a global audience distributed equally across three continents. In an industry plagued by risk aversion, The Guardian has been rewarded for its originality. And under the tenure of chief executive Anna Bateson, it has become a rare success story. It attributes the achievement, in part, to this sui generis approach. The company, whose financial year ends in April, turned a profit of $15 million in 2022 on global revenues of $322 million, and it has used the growth to fuel its expansion in the U.S. In 2023, it generated…

In 1961, an 18-year-old George Harrison opened a copy of the Liverpool Echo and saw an ad for a used electric guitar. It was a 1957 Gretsch Duo Jet—coal black, more chrome than a Cadillac. The seller, a Cunard crewman, wanted 75 pounds. “I rushed right over to see it,” Harrison would recall years later, after The Beatles had made him famous. “It was my first real American guitar. … It was secondhand, but I polished that thing. I was so proud to own that.” Harrison could have been channeling the sentiments of many a striving picker who’s suffered his share of beat-up six strings. When they’re finally able to plunk down the cash for a Gretsch (and a new one’ll set you back anywhere from $600 to $3,000), they’re…

Sarah Freund is very much in the prime of her career as director of media at Brill Media. But she’s already living the life of a snowbird: summers in her native northern Michigan close to family, and the rest of the year in Hawaii, where she’s taken up the practice of hula dancing. “My parents actually originally met in Oahu, but they didn’t take me here as a child,” Freund said. She came to the islands for the first time after college to do a work-exchange program on an organic farm and “just fell in love with it.” Shortly after getting married, she and her husband bought property there in 2017. Enchanted by the beauty and power of hula, Freund began taking lessons in 2020 with a friend who was…

The measurement industry is at an inflection point. In 2021, measurement giant Nielsen lost its third-party accreditation from the Media Rating Council after the company admitted to undercounting audiences, which could’ve translated to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost advertising spend. This blew the doors wide open for competitors debuting alternate currencies. Since that time, companies such as iSpot and VideoAmp have snagged headlines and started new partnerships. Meanwhile, consortiums like the Joint Industry Committee (JIC), which Nielsen has declined to join, are looking to bring standards to the overall measurement marketplace. Adding to the disruption in the industry, Nielsen—which is in the midst of rolling out its new cross-measurement solution Nielsen One—has delayed sunsetting the old standard for currency, C3 and C7. It also recently filed a lawsuit…

Following a year of Hollywood strikes, increased macroeconomic uncertainty and growing media industry upheaval, Adweek’s Hot List—which highlights the standouts in TV, media and digital & tech brands—is back and hotter than ever. This year’s list features TV executives and creators making an impact in the industry: Media Visionary Rob McElhenney and TV Exec of the Year Channing Dungey. We’re also honoring new digital obsessions, including ChatGPT and Meta’s Threads, and companies thriving in a constantly shifting media environment. (We’re looking at you, GQ and New York Magazine.) The honorees are shaking things up, bringing striking changes and, yes, turning up the heat.…

DURING A YEAR when scripted content became stunted by the Hollywood strikes, Channing Dungey, ADWEEK’s 2024 TV Executive of the Year, just kept making it work. In 2020, Dungey became chairwoman and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Group, making her one of the premier Black executives leading the charge in the television industry. However, the exec had plenty of cachet to her name heading into the role, previously serving as president of ABC’s Entertainment Group and vice president of original content at Netflix. And for the last year, Dungey has called upon all that experience to consistently deliver strong results for WBTV. In 2023, the exec revitalized the long-running Bachelor franchise with the hit The Golden Bachelor. Excluding sports, that series became the No. 2 entertainment series, scripted or unscripted,…

For almost 70 years, GQ has served as the style guide for men all over the world. With over 52 million global monthly unique visitors, according to the publisher, and more than 41 million followers across its social media, the Condé Nast title is reaching its audience across the world. Despite a tumultuous few years in the media industry, GQ has been branching out into new sectors like sports with GQ Sports in 2022. GQ Sports—where fans learn more about the biggest athletes beyond their sports—broke social video records in 2023, with 239 million total views. Its popular Men of the Year issue, and corresponding November event in Los Angeles, helps the publisher stay relevant by featuring style icons like Jacob Elordi, A$AP Rocky and Kim Kardashian. The issue’s content…

BEFORE WALKING the L’Oréal Paris Fashion Week runway in a bright yellow ensemble last October, TikTok creator Monet McMichael experienced a whirlwind of nerves backstage. This was her first time on the runway. “We got [to the venue] at noon and ended up walking at 9 p.m.,” McMichael said. “It was a lot of glam time leading up to the moment. It was unreal.” L’Oréal is just one of the high-profile brands McMichael has recently inked deals with. Shortly after graduating from Rutgers Nursing School in May 2022, she became a full-time creator. Since then, she’s worked with big brands across beauty and skin care on TikTok and Instagram, including Google x Pat McGrath for its “#ShopWithGooglePartner” campaign, Charlotte Tilbury’s Disney “#StepIntoMagic” campaign and a collab with MAC Cosmetics. Forbes…

Each year, ADWEEK’s Creative 100 honors the industry’s most innovative professionals—visionary talent who over the past year have broken ground across advertising, marketing, social media, TV and streaming, filmmaking, visual art and more. Anyone who wishes to nominate a potential honoree can do so, with the final list curated by our editors. But be sure to check that your nominee wasn’t previously recognized because the Creative 100 doesn’t repeat names. This year’s categories: Agency Creative Leaders Rising Agency Creative Talent Brand Innovators Media, TV, Streaming Innovators Directors Influencers and Celebrities Visual Artists The deadline for submissions is April 9. Winners will be recognized in ADWEEK’s June issue. For details, visit adweek.com.…

Many of Americans’ favorite brands—think Oreo, Dove, Tide and Snickers, for example—rely on the availability of cheap, disposable packaging made mostly of plastics. Experts say shifting away from single-use plastic packaging is necessary, but it’ll require systemic, expensive changes to how Americans get their snacks—and most of their groceries, personal care products and cleaning supplies. To spur this, activists and environmental groups are pushing legislation that would require brands to pay for the trash they generate through single-use packaging. The goal of the legislation is to encourage less packaging over time and incentivize a shift to refill and reuse. Major brands and plastic producers say they’re supportive of this legislation on the condition that “advanced recycling,” which they say would create a circular system for plastics, be defined as a…

After playing an aggressive, self-obsessed wannabe badass for 16 seasons, Rob McElhenney’s character in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has one signature line that best describes what the actor is building in Hollywood: “more better.” The “more” part of it is obvious. McElhenney, ADWEEK’s 2024 Media Visionary, has only added to a growing roster of buzzy projects in recent years. This includes creating the Emmy-winning Welcome to Wrexham alongside Ryan Reynolds, as well as working on his other shows, Always Sunny (which also has a successful podcast) and Mythic Quest. He’s also founded companies including Four Walls Whiskey, with Always Sunny collaborators Glenn Howerton and Charlie Day, and tech company Adim. In addition, he’s part of a $218 million investment in Formula 1. But to do everything “better,” he’s finally…

WHO ELSE but the Hollywood strikers as Game Changer of the Year? From May 2 to Sept. 27, over 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike for 148 days—tied for the second-longest stoppage in WGA history. The 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA soon joined, marking only the second time two Hollywood unions were striking simultaneously. The biggest concerns for the unions included residuals from streaming media, protections against AI, requirements for minimum staffing in writers’ rooms and establishments of bonuses based on how their work performed on streaming. Production on scripted content paused for months, forcing networks to readjust their content strategies and change their broadcast network schedules until new deals could be reached that the unions felt fairly compensated their members. The strike generated more than…

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Forget Thanksgiving turkey—November was also the month that Bloomberg’s 5-year-old paid product, which is aimed at business decision-makers in finance, tech and telecommunications, crossed the 500,000 subscribers mark. The publisher has been in front of high-profile business news stories this year, like charting the fall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried on the publisher’s popular Spellcaster podcast, in partnership with Wondery (one of the 25 most-downloaded new podcasts of 2023, per the publisher). Its first feature-length documentary, RUIN, part of its recently released original video streaming programming Bloomberg Originals, also tackled the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. Besides reporting scoops on the fall of SVB, market-moving exclusive interviews with Credit Suisse’s top shareholders, as well as following the rich and powerful, like newly minted billionaire Taylor Swift, the publisher bolstered its…

At a time when most prognosticators have declared print media dead, Vox Media’s New York Magazine has published several covers that ignited cultural conversations on topics like rules for post-pandemic etiquette, the history of “It” girls and the real cost of living in New York. The publisher’s work was honored with several American Society of Magazine Editors Awards and a Pulitzer Prize in criticism. During a year where much of the media industry contracted, New York Magazine reached 1 million newsletter subscribers, ADWEEK previously reported. It also increased advertising revenue at women-focused title The Cut, per Digiday reporting, and the publication welcomed the podcast of acclaimed relationship therapist Esther Perel.…

There are few more dynamic industries at the moment than the business of sports, which has found itself at the center of twin revolutions in streaming and influencer marketing. Since its launch in 2016, the digitally native Front Office Sports has billed itself as the perfect outlet to cover this crucial moment. In 2023, FOS took two massive steps to further validate that claim. It landed an investment from RedBird IMI, the fund led by former CNN honcho Jeff Zucker, which valued it at $40 million, and it hired Adam Duerson, a 20-year veteran of Sports Illustrated, as its new editor in chief. Now, with fresh capital and expertise in tow, FOS is ready for the big leagues.…

MICROSOFT has long been the elder statesman of tech giants, a reliable cash cow for investors, but not necessarily the source of excitement for innovation or a weather vane for the future of technological development. But under CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership, and especially in the past 15 months, Microsoft has been able to change that narrative, crossing into a $3 trillion market valuation and surpassing Apple as the world’s most valuable company earlier this year. Fueling this growth is Microsoft’s positioning as a leader in artificial intelligence and Wall Street’s belief that the generative AI Microsoft has invested billions in will be a seismic leap for technology and society. Casual observers might see Microsoft’s rise as a rapid development, starting with the viral release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022,…

The burger fan bent on clogging his arteries has choices aplenty: the 1,130-calorie SuperSonic Bacon Double Cheeseburger, for example, or Wendy’s Loaded Nacho Triple Cheeseburger (1,280 calories). Belt-buster burgers are the norm nowadays, but their legacy goes back three decades. In 1993, McDonald’s debuted a sandwich that made even its 590-calorie Big Mac look modest. The Mega Mac featured no fewer than four beef patties (nearly half a pound of beef), plus extra cheese. ADWEEK, which is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, took note of this chow—but mostly over the marketing. With Burger King and Wendy’s ever on its heels, McDonald’s was banking on the timeless lure of lipids as it tested its 720-calorie behemoth. “Corporate is said to be very high on its appeal to teens and as…