Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals.

Inside the data conflict when brands switch agencies

“For brands undertaking a media agency review, sometimes the hardest part about breaking up with an old agency is figuring out who gets the data,” Ad Age’s Garett Sloane writes. “The value of data has become evident to brands and its role in media planning is increasingly vital—making it perhaps the most central question when handling media reviews.”

The details: “When a brand makes a switch to a new agency, it’s not always as simple as taking historical campaign data with them,” Sloane notes, “especially if the brand hasn’t been managing the buying directly, say, through Google’s Display and Video 360 DSP or within The Trade Desk’s DSP, according to ad leaders. There also are inter-agency politics to navigate where a former agency isn’t always keen on handing over historical campaign data, which they sometimes consider proprietary.”

Essential context: “Before moving accounts to a new agency, brands need to get a grip on what data they own, how important it is to their media plans and how portable it is to their new agency, according to advertising leaders,” Sloane adds.

Keep reading here.

Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell

• “US applications for jobless benefits rise but remain at low levels,” from ABC News

• “ADP jobs report says 146,000 workers hired in November. U.S. jobs market in stable condition,” from MarketWatch

• “Fed Chair Powell Acknowledges Inflation Is a ‘Little Higher’ Than Expected,” The New York Times reports

• “Homebuyer demand for mortgages jumped 6%, as interest rates fell to the lowest level in over a month,” per CNBC

2024 Black Friday/Cyber Monday consumer behavior revealed

Performance marketing company Wunderkind is out with new data tracking 2024 Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) consumer behavior. In analyzing $4.1 billion in BFCM transactions across more than 1,000 U.S. retail clients—including big-box stores, e-commerce retailers and direct-to-consumer brands—Wunderkind found that:

• Consumers’ order sizes tripled. “During BFCM, the average items per order hovered around 3, compared to 1 in the week leading up,” Wunderkind notes.

• Consumers prepped to shop and buy before Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Wunderkind found that “this year 42% of BFCM purchasers made at least one site visit in the week leading up to BFCM.”

• Conversion rates surged. Wunderkind found that the average e-commerce site visit during BFCM was twice as likely to result in a purchase, compared to visits pre-BFCM.

• Last-minute e-commerce shoppers drove BFCM conversions. “Conversion rates hit their highest on Cyber Monday around 9:50 p.m. ET, with additional surges leading into the end of the day at 12:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m. ET—aligning with the end of the day on the West Coast,” Wunderkind notes.

Spotify again brings data to the streets with its ‘Wrapped’ campaign

“Spotify’s year-end ‘Wrapped’ campaign, long considered a touchstone for creative use of data, introduces some new elements for 2024 but continues to lean into out-of-home advertising that crunches streaming numbers in fun ways,” Ad Age Tim Nudd reports.

More details: “Along with the advertising, the in-app ‘Wrapped’ experience is also seeing upgrades, with the user data on streaming extending beyond music to podcasts and audiobooks,” Nudd adds. “The latter are also getting their own global charts ranking the top creators, much as Spotify has long produced for musical artists.”

Essential context: “Fans of the ‘Wrapped’ billboards going back to 2016 will recognize the format of the OOH executions, which filter artist and song data—representing cultural moments and trends—through different geographic and psychographic lenses. The artists featured in the ads include top streamers from Beyoncé to Karol G to Shaboozey.”

Keep reading—and see the creative—here.

What’s up (and down) with the nation’s top advertisers

Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2024 ranks the top 200 U.S. advertisers and has profiles of the top 50. Total U.S. spending for the 200 biggest advertisers rose a modest 2.5% in 2023, with increases at 122 marketers and spending cuts at 78.

To dive in, start with our “big picture” post here.

Just briefly

• “Meta to invest $10 billion for Louisiana data center,” Reuters reports

• “As data centers proliferate, conflict with local communities follows,” from The Associated Press

• “Why personality data is key to scalable B2B marketing,” from MarTech

• “Chinese hackers stole large amounts of Americans’ phone data from eight telecoms, officials say,” per NBC News

The newsletter is brought to you by Ad Age Datacenter, the industry’s most authoritative source of competitive intel and home to the Ad Age Leading National Advertisers, the Ad Age Agency Report: World’s Biggest Agency Companies and other exclusive data-driven reports. Access or subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter at AdAge.com/Datacenter.

Ad Age Datacenter is Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee.