DIGITAL IS HAVING A MIDLIFE CRISIS. THE WAY FORWARD IS EXPERIMENTATION. | BBH Labs – nice diagnosis but shouty headline. Ironically the problem is the ad industry dashing headlong into technology and expecting it to work. Yet between 70 and 95 percent of technology projects don’t perform as expected. I don’t think digital is having a midlife crisis – instead I think agencies need to develop maturity. More related content here
Why You Might Build Your Start-up in China over Silicon Valley | Hacker Noon – or Silicon Roundabout / Silicon Fen for that matter
Invisible Hand Behind WPP Wednesday: Transparency Takes Toll | Agency News – AdAge – Holding company revenue in North America has been flat to down in recent quarters, running well below increases in U.S. gross domestic product and media spending. It’s a trend that started the third quarter of last year, just after the Association of National Advertisers issued its report from investigations firm K2 on media transparency.”There is at minimum a coincidence between the timing of the release of the K2 report and the sudden deceleration in U.S./North America organic revenue growth for the holding companies, which began in the third quarter of last year,” says Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. “It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t had some impact in terms of clients looking to tighten up contract language. This is reinforced by my conversations with marketers who have only recently learned about how their contracts have allowed for agencies to generate authorized but undisclosed markups. But I also think that a slowdown in spending on media from large marketers is at play, as is zero-based budgeting.”
Hong Kong police launch investigations into suspicious China UnionPay withdrawals amid capital flight concerns – surprised that crypto currency isn’t being used in this more
Ignorance of Pricing is Ruining Ad Agencies | Trinity P3 – it sounds more like ignorance of product marketing
Apple iCloud Keychain easily slurped by cops, ElcomSoft claims • The Register – ElcomSoft’s Phone Breaker 7.0 has gained the ability to access and decrypt iCloud Keychain data, under certain circumstances.
China’s outbound investment to further grow after the party congress, says PwC | South China Morning Post – pure speculation. M&A would need to be balanced against increased resistance from the likes of the EU and ASEAN countries
Hugo: The IT Bot – done by Digitas LBi for HPE
Advertising Philosopher: An Interview with Faris Yakob (Part Three) | Annenberg Innovation Lab – Worth reading on content
Ad Age Wake-Up Call: News about Google, Walmart and WPP | News – AdAge – WPP cut its full-year revenue forecast, predicting revenue growth between zero and 1% this year. Previously, it had predicted 2% growth. WPP’s share price fell up to 12% after the company released its first-half earnings, and Bloomberg News said it was their biggest drop in 17 years. Agency holding companies have been hurting as some clients trim advertising budgets. UK-based WPP, the biggest agency company by revenue, singled out “pressure on client spending in the second quarter, particularly in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) or packaged goods sector.”
London Calling for Brexit Fix | Agency News – AdAge – “Brexit threatens to diminish the U.K.’s international standing, and arguably has done so already,” says WPP CEO Martin Sorrell, who has been an outspoken critic of Brexit. “One of the reasons we have doubled down on investment in western continental Europe is to maintain our influence in critical markets such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain—four of our top 10 markets worldwide—and Brussels, where our international competitors are already seeking to use Brexit against us.”
The Cult of the Costco Surfboard | The New Yorker – paywall
Will Artificial Intelligence Be Illegal in Europe Next Year? | Entrepreneur – data portability and an explanation for automated decision pose interesting challenges
SOS Alerts – Andy Kinsella – Google now competing with the Facebook alerts system
UK Supermarket May Have Accidentally Infected Thousands With Hep E Virus | LADbible – protecting the supermarket like this will damage trust across the food supply chain
DEA: ‘There Is No Silver Bullet’ for Going Dark – Motherboard