By Stephen Lepitak, published by Adweek

Creator Collective connects clients with the platform’s top talent

TikTok will partner with IPG Mediabrands to offer the agency network more direct access to creative talent on the platform.

The creator and content accelerator initiative will be named The Creator Collective and aims to help guide brands to build “an authentic presence” on the platform that will resonate with TikTok’s community, according to the company’s statement.

The three-year initiative will involve the founding of Creator Camps—sessions with TikTok creators who will meet each quarter with the agency’s clients to offer advice and feedback on their campaign plans.

Also available through the partnership will be training, access to resources and advice on best practices and research and media trial opportunities.

“On TikTok, brands have the unique ability to become creators and storytellers by listening to the community and adopting an always-on approach to their content,” said Blake Chandlee, president of global business solutions for TikTok.

For agency clients, the partnership is aimed at keeping their messaging and tactics relevant.
“As audience reach declines in traditional formats, it is critical that client budgets fund new ways to connect with audiences,” added Dani Benowitz, president of IPG Mediabrands’ investment arm, Magna. “This partnership will deliver incredible value to our clients and, as importantly, will help all of us learn the power of creating content communities at scale.”

The partnership will also see the pair aim to identify new diversity and inclusion initiatives on and off the platform while also looking to benefit nonprofit organizations.

In March it was announced that TikTok had joined the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online with the platform having guidelines in place that prohibit content that depicts or promotes poaching or illegal trade of wildlife.
 

Read the article in Adweek

By Ethan Jakob Craft, Published in AdAge
 
Magna’s full-year projection is 2.3 percentage points, or $10 billion in ad revenue, stronger than its previous forecast in December
 
As the U.S. gets back on track following a disastrous 2020, so will the country’s advertising industry. Total ad revenues will rise by billions of dollars, and most marketing channels will stabilize to, or grow above, their pre-pandemic normals, the latest Magna Advertising Forecast predicts.
 
Buoyed by a long-term decline in COVID-19 cases, President Biden’s trillion-dollar stimulus package, and a return to regular sports programming, the advertising industry’s total 2021 revenues are set to increase 6.4% to $240 billion, according to Magna’s new report, released today. That outlook is 2.3 percentage points stronger than the company projected in its previous forecast from December 2020.
 
Excluding one-off spending surrounding events such as last year’s political cycle and the upcoming Summer Olympics in Tokyo, the normalized growth rate for ad revenues this year would be even more significant at 8.6%.
 
“We were always predicting the overall decline of the U.S. market would be moderate,” says the report’s author Vincent Letang, executive VP, global market intelligence at Magna. Not every forecaster was so optimistic at this time last year, he says, but the market eventually proved to be “even more resilient than we thought.”
 
Total ad spend inclusive of cyclical events is simultaneously poised to jump this year by an average of 7.25%; broken down by fiscal quarter, the year-over-year increases may be as high as 15% in Q2 this year against historically sparse spending in 2020, and as low as 2% in Q4, thanks to last year’s major political and holiday spending.
 
This year’s strongest ad spending will come from verticals such as travel, automotive, drinks and entertainment—categories that saw sweeping ad budget cuts last year as consumer demand all but disappeared in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Other verticals’ spending growth may not be as robust through 2021, but the silver lining is that few, if any, categories will see a decline this year, Letang says.
 
There is one exception to the rule, though. “One vertical that may not grow very much would be, in my opinion, retail,” he says, citing the industry’s reliance on foundational brick-and-mortar stores, despite an e-commerce boom.
 
In the 12 months since the pandemic became severe in the U.S., everything from groceries to prescription drugs to luxury goods has adapted to a world of online shopping, which may hinder consumers’ swift return to normal. “We’ve had a record number of store closures. It might continue despite the economic recovery,” Letang says.
 
Nearly all ad formats will also see stabilization or growth this year relative to pre-pandemic levels. Social, digital video, search and out-of-home media should all anticipate double-digit growth in 2021, while national TV and radio are in for more sluggish single-digit increases.
 
For the first time, digital formats will account for at least two-thirds of all ad sales, growing 13% to $161 billion this year. The “big three” digital players—Google, Facebook and Amazon—have been outperforming themselves in terms of ad revenues, recording 17% growth in 2020 to now capture 82% of the market share. Social and search ads account for roughly two-thirds of the digital ad market in 2021, Letang adds.
 
He credits the current market’s recovery speed to the prominence of digital advertising, which had less than 20% market share of ad revenues a decade ago, and has seen such major gains that it has supplemented linear advertising’s shaky rebound. Much of that growth can be chalked up to a recent embracing of digital marketing by small mom-and-pop businesses, which Letang calls a “matter of survival” for them.
 
An upswing of rapid growth carried by digital media means the ad market’s recovery time will be just a fraction of what it was during the Great Recession; in fact, total U.S. advertising only posted an actual decrease for one quarter since the outbreak of COVID-19, versus an industry-wide decline across nine consecutive quarters from 2007 to 2009.
 
The industry’s resilience wouldn’t be possible without 2020’s record-setting political ad spend, which topped $8 billion amid a bitter fight for the presidency and partisan control of Congress. And while total revenues were up 75% compared to the 2016 political cycle, a surge in pandemic-related e-commerce and American businesses adopting digital marketing strategies also deserve some of the credit, the report states.
 
Unsurprisingly, another boon this year will be the Olympics, which Magna has assumed are proceeding as scheduled for the purposes of its new forecast. The international sporting event will net between $800 million and $900 million for national TV ad revenues this year, by Letang’s estimation, who notes an unprecedented Olympic double-whammy: Six months after the Closing Ceremony in Tokyo, the 2022 Winter Olympics will be in full swing in Beijing.
 
Read the article in AdAge

By Ethan Jakob Craft, Published in AdAge
 
New report from Magna and IPG’s Mediahub finds less is more when it comes to marketers’ digital messages
 
Some of the most common tactics used in online ads might actually alienate consumers and contribute to the public’s increasingly negative perceptions of advertising, a new study from Magna and IPG’s Mediahub has found.
 
Dubbed “The Ins and Outs of Ad Sentiment,” the report released today examined peoples’ feelings towards various aspects of online advertising including frequency, message content, targeting strategies and more, and found many simply feel “meh” towards online ads. While few actively trust and engage with online advertising, not many more oppose it, with the majority of those surveyed reporting indifferent feelings.
 
The study was conducted late last year among consumers in both the U.S. and Australia.
 
“We saw with this research that there is generally a negative, or sort of apathetic opinion towards online advertising,” says Kara Manatt, senior VP of intelligence solutions at Magna.
 
One of the biggest turn-offs for consumers of online advertising: heavy ad loads. With messages popping up back-to-back all day long, people report feeling harassed or annoyed—especially when they continue to be served ads for products they’ve already purchased.
 
Reducing the number of ads shown to consumers on a daily basis, coupled with improved targeting formulas, could boost overall ad sentiment by more than one-third, the Magna and Mediahub study found.
 
However, ad targeting is a double-edged sword, the study shows. Serving consumers non-targeted online ads often equals showing them irrelevant content, which tends to heighten apathy and disengagement; on the flip side, hyper-personalization or improper use of targeting can drive feelings of creepiness, making people weary of the offending advertiser. In addition, targeted ads that are aggressively product-focused tend to turn away consumers.
 
“Our industry’s tendency to deliver more and more ads is really backfiring,” Manatt says, though the issue is not so cut-and-dried. U.S. consumers who participated in the new study were twice as likely to cite overwhelming ad load as a driver of negative sentiments than their Australian counterparts, she says.
 
As of late 2020, when the study was conducted, just 12% of consumers reported believing that “online ads are good for society” and only 10% said they completely trust online ads; conversely, 17% said they’re bad for society and 28% responded that they don’t trust online ads at all.
 
It’s the in-between of those numbers where the silver lining lies: The vast majority of people surveyed reported neutral feelings, meaning there’s lots of room for online marketers to make inroads with the public, Manatt says. “That’s really our opportunity to hopefully improve things, build consumer advertiser trust, and hopefully get people feeling more positive about advertising.”
 
In general, less is more when it comes to online advertising—creating more impactful, less frequent ads in a non-cluttered environment is what the bulk of consumers respond well to, she adds. Sponsored content also should be clearly marked as such to maintain strong consumer trust.
 
“The industry, and actually individual companies, should have a vested interest in lowering the ad clutter,” she adds. “It’s also something that we know will make their individual campaigns work harder.”
 
What is clear from the study is that there’s little consensus among consumers about what makes online advertising effective versus what makes it annoying.
 
Including music in online ads, for example, can be an engaging add-on for some consumers, although it’s a very subjective creative element that can just as easily be perceived as annoying—particularly when the tracks feature “pounding beats or screeching guitars,” the study says. On the whole, including music in an online ad is a negative factor.
 
Creating ads centered on current events was another point of contention among respondents. Brands engaging with such issues is a tactic generally looked upon favorably, according to the study.
 
But while acknowledging current events can help increase the entertainment value of an ad, doing so inauthentically can hurt an advertiser’s reach—as was the case when everyone and their mother jumped on the “we’re here for you” bandwagon during the first wave of COVID-19 last year, leading many consumers to tune out such messages.
 
“If it’s not authentic, it’s not going to work and it’s going to backfire,” Manatt says. “What we’re seeing six, eight months later,” after the initial rush of solidarity ads, she says, “is there’s a lot of brands that kind of jumped on that bandwagon and felt that they had to have a message related to COVID no matter what.”
 
And while consumers might not hold a grudge against any particular brand for serving that type of message, being bombarded by similar ads all at once is a turn-off. “Timing is almost as important as authenticity,” she adds.
 
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