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

TV advertising’s top 3 growth categories

TV advertising analytics firm iSpot.tv is out with fresh data about the state of the TV ad market during the first half of 2022. A few key insights that iSpot shared with Datacenter Weekly first:

• The three marketer categories that saw the most year-over-year first-half growth in their TV ad impressions are travel (up 93%), sports betting (+81%) and movie studios (+64%).

• TV continues to be incredibly dependent on live sports for ad deliveries. Some 25.5% of all H1 2022 TV ad impressions delivered during new-episode programming came via live sports telecasts—up from 22.4% in H1 2021. (Part of that boost was due to the Winter Olympics.)

• The top five networks by TV ad impressions share of voice (SOV) in H1 2022, according to iSpot: CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News and CNN, in that order.

Criteo reveals how it’s dealing with Apple’s data lockdown

“In its financial results this week, Criteo said it took a $16 million hit to revenue in the second quarter, partially blaming Apple’s anti-tracking policies,” Ad Age’s Garett Sloane reports. “Still, Criteo is in the middle of its post-cookie transition, and just closed a $250 million deal to buy IPONWEB, a U.K.-based ad tech firm, which helps Criteo fill out its buy- and sell-side ad technology.”

Essential context: “Criteo’s updates about its strategy reflect broader trends in ad tech, moving off cookies, forging new partnerships and pushing into areas like retail media,” Sloane adds.

Keep reading here.

Stagwell remains optimistic

“Stagwell Inc. posted double-digit second-quarter organic revenue growth,” Ad Age’s Brian Bonilla reports, “and maintained its annual forecast as the holding company plans to further mix its creative and media capabilities.” Also, “Stagwell has kept its guidance the same as last quarter. The holding company still predicts 18% to 22% net revenue organic growth in 2022.”

Essential context: “After years of procurement separating media from creative, the demands of the digital world are bringing them together again, and we are responding to this trend,” Stagwell CEO Mark Penn said on the company’s quarterly conference call. “These new kinds of media and creative and commerce hybrid accounts are helping fuel 33% growth in the media capability.”

Keep reading here.

See also: Stagwell CEO Mark Penn talks after earnings call.

Also: We shared details about Publicis, IPG and Omnicom results and forecasts in the July 22 edition of Datacenter Weekly.

Still to come: Dentsu Group will report its second-quarter earnings on Aug 10.

Macroeconomic news and data in a nutshell

• “U.S. employment claims climb to 260,000 and stick near nine-month high,” per MarketWatch.

• “U.S. factory orders rise solidly in June, beat expectations,” from Reuters.

• “US Services Gauge Unexpectedly Climbs to a Three-Month High,” Bloomberg News reports.

• “Fed’s James Bullard expresses confidence that the economy can achieve a ‘soft landing,’” per CNBC.

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.

A bull market for political advertising

Total campaign ad spending for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, gubernatorial and other races in the midterm elections has surged past $2.4 billion, according to the latest Ad Age Campaign Ad Scorecard analysis. That tally includes TV, radio and tracked digital advertising from Dec. 28, 2021, through Election Day as of July 25, 2022, and includes spending by the candidates’ campaigns and the political action committees supporting them, as well as selected local and state campaigns and issue-oriented campaigns supporting or opposing ballot measures.

Speaking of ballot measures, California media owners and operators are seeing a major windfall thanks to Proposition 27, a measure to allow online sports betting. So far, three organizations have burned through a total of $118 million to strafe voters with advertising either supporting or opposing 27—and Golden State residents will likely see tons more ads over the next few months, given that pro- and anti-27 groups are together closing in on raising a quarter billion dollars.

Incidentally, a big chunk of money on the pro-27 side is coming from three big national brand marketers in the gambling space—DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM.

Keep reading here.

Just briefly

• “Media measurement uncertainty—tracking TV, social and digital,” a new blog from Ad Age.

• “Footprint wants to change how companies collect, store and share personal data,” per TechCrunch.

• “Taking ‘Little Miss’ quizzes going around TikTok? Be warned, they’re collecting your data,” Mashable reports.

• “Concerns About Advertising Using Health Data Are Rising. Where Does HIPAA Apply?,” from AdExchanger.

• “Pinterest’s dip in users less than what analysts expected in second quarter,” per Bloomberg News (via Ad Age).

• “Tim Hortons Offers a Free Coffee and Pastry for Spying on People for Over a Year,” per Vice Motherboard.

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”

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.