Making sense of influencer marketing measurement, plus bullish holding company forecasts: Datacenter Weekly

Welcome to Ad Age Datacenter Weekly, our data-obsessed newsletter for marketing and media professionals. Publicis, IPG and Omnicom remain bullish about 2022 growth On Thursday, “Publicis Groupe reported 10.3% organic revenue growth and a 21% increase in net revenue to €5.9 billion, or $6.01 billion, for its second quarter,” Ad Age’s Brian Bonilla reports. Publicis also raised its full-year organic revenue growth expectations to 6% to 7%—up from a prior forecast of 4% to 5%. Also on Thursday, “Interpublic Group of Cos. reported 7.9% organic net revenue growth and a net revenue increase of 4.7% compared to last year, bringing the holding company’s net revenue to $2.38 billion,” per Bonilla. IPG likewise adjusted its forecast for organic revenue growth—to 6.5% for the full year, up from a previous 6%. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, “Omnicom Group reported an 11.3% increase in second-quarter organic revenue,” per Ad Age’s Keira Wingate, “with growth in every discipline and region.” Omnicom also hiked its full-year organic revenue growth forecast—to 6.5% to 7%, up from 6% to 6.5% previously. Keep reading about the Publicis, IPG and Omnicom results and projections here, here and here. Still to come: Stagwell will report its second-quarter earnings on Aug. 4 and Dentsu Group on Aug 10.Previously: “What recession? Ad employment surged in June, topping pre-pandemic level,” from Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson, July 8. Top marketers, brands and agency ventures Ad Age Datacenter’s definitive rankings of the biggest U.S. and global advertisers and agency companies Click here Subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter for essential data and insights on all of the most-advertised brands. Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell • “Jobless claims rise again in another sign that labor market is cooling,” from CNBC. • “U.S. Home Prices Hit Record of $416,000 in June as Sales Continued to Slide,” per The Wall Street Journal. • “Mortgage demand hits 22-year low as loan applications continue to drop,” Fox Business reports. • “Bank data shows U.S. consumer financial health holds up amid rising inflation,” from Reuters.Don’t miss: “Layoffs and budget cuts—tracking economic moves and news,” Ad Age’s continually updated blog covering how the marketing industry is bracing for a recession. See Ad Age Datacenter Agency Report 2022 The agency business rebounded with a surge in revenue and hiring. But caution signs are ahead. Click here Quantifying influencer marketing effectiveness “The Association of National Advertisers is looking to set some standards in a category that has few—influencer marketing measurement,” reports Ad Age’s Jack Neff. “The country’s foremost marketer organization has issued its first guidelines for measuring influencer marketing, looking to create common ground for assessing the effectiveness of a fast-growing channel with widely disparate and confusing practices.” Essential context: Neff notes that the ANA guidelines doc “details how each of the eight major social platforms for influencers—Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube—defines engagement differently,” which complicates platform-vs.-platform comparisons. Background: Influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ has been working behind the scenes with various ANA members, including its customer Unilever, to develop a framework for influencer marketing measurement. (The ANA Influencer Marketing Advisory Board—which produced the ANA’s influencer marketing guidelines—is chaired by Casey DePalma McCartney, senior director, external communications and digital engagement at Unilever.) Flashback: Regular readers of Datacenter Weekly might experience a bit of déjà vu regarding the issue of cross-platform measurement and comparison in the influencer marketing space. For instance, in the Aug. 27, 2021, edition of Datacenter Weekly, we wrote, “It’s important to note that CreatorIQ’s calculation of its so-called Engagement Rate metric varies a bit from platform to platform because of platform-specific capabilities and terminology. ... In other words, a strict apples-to-apples comparison isn’t possible because of user interface differences.” What’s next: A CreatorIQ spokesperson tells Datacenter Weekly that it has already integrated the ANA standards into its platform—and will be issuing additional ongoing guidance for clients and brands next week. 100 million That’s the number of Americans facing excessive heat warnings or heat advisories this week, per CNN. See also: “Heatwave: Records fall as extreme heat bakes Western Europe,” from the BBC. Ice cream brand Magnum acknowledged the U.K.’s record heat in a campaign featuring a melting ice cream bar, Ad Age’s Alexandra Jardine reports. See America's Hottest Brands 20 brands that are having a moment Click here What ‘nonmovement’ of data means “When InfoSum said to advertisers and publishers that its platform does not ‘move’ their data,” writes Ad Age’s Garett Sloane, “it was a hard concept for potential clients to grasp, admits InfoSum CEO Brian Lesser. Clients—the ad agencies, brands and publishers—still had to upload data from their digital data stores into InfoSum; and to some, that seemed like ‘movement.’ Now, that step is being eliminated as one part of an upgrade to InfoSum’s data clean room and collaboration platform.” How it works: “We invented the concept of ‘nonmovement’ of data,” Lesser explained to Sloane in a recent interview, “and what ‘nonmovement’ means is, if your data is in the InfoSum environment, and you have multiple partners that also have their data in the InfoSum environment, the data is never comingled. It stays in your environment and yet you can still collaborate.” Essential context: “InfoSum said publishers like Disney and UK-based ITV are testing its next-generation platform, as is Annalect, Omnicom’s data-powered marketing platform,” Sloane adds. Keep reading here. Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022 In his introduction to the newly released Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2022 report, Ad Age Datacenter’s Bradley Johnson reports that advertisers scored “the second-biggest spending gain on record” in 2021, marking “an extraordinary turnaround from the pandemic plunge in 2020. Spending has continued to grow in 2022, though budgets could come under pressure as marketers grapple with inflation, rising interest rates and slumping consumer confidence amid escalating expectations of a recession.” There’s a lot to LNA 2022—so the Datacenter team has come up with multiple entry points for you to start your own deep dive. To wit: • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—10 most-advertised brands in the U.S., ranked” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Will ad spending rise in the (coming) recession? It’s happened before” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—25 biggest U.S. advertisers, ranked” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—U.S. market leaders and category rankings” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Big spending gains and cuts” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—What comes next after 2021's ad spending surge” • “Leading National Advertisers 2022—Ad spending by medium, category and advertiser” Just briefly • “TikTok has been accused of ‘aggressive’ data harvesting. Is your information at risk?,” from The Guardian. • “FCC Wants to Know if US Carriers Are Exposing Users’ Geolocation Data,” PC Magazine reports. • “Human-centered marketing—why brands shouldn’t segment consumers,” from Ad Age. • “Homeland Security records show ‘shocking’ use of phone data, ACLU says,” per Politico. • “How Florence Nightingale Changed Data Visualization Forever,” from Scientific American. 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 Kevin Brown, Bradley Johnson and Joy R. Lee. This week’s newsletter was compiled and written by Simon Dumenco. Subscribe to Ad Age Datacenter for essential data and insights on all of the most-advertised brands.

Making sense of influencer marketing measurement, plus bullish holding company forecasts: Datacenter Weekly

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