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The Surprising Trend Behind Ad Tech’s M&A Boom: Context Is King
Leading Edge January 21, 2025As the advertising industry grapples with the challenges of signal deprecation, privacy regulations, and fragmented consumer behaviors, a new era of innovation is emerging — one where ad tech finally serves the human side of advertising.
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The Hidden Costs Eating Your Ad Budget
Leading Edge January 20, 2025Every day, marketers are paying full price for their digital ad campaigns while getting only a fraction of what they paid for. It's like you pull up to a gas station that advertises premium fuel, but instead they fill your tank with watered-down regular gas. You’re paying top dollar but driving away with a fraction of the horsepower you paid for.
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With TikTok Ban Looming, Advertisers Face a Gen Z Connection Crisis
Leading Edge January 17, 2025Brands are scurrying to pivot their influencer and advertising plans in advance of the (potential) looming U.S. TikTok ban, but there’s little that can be done to avoid short-term disruption. When more than $10 billion in ad revenue is in flux, the market is going to feel it — perhaps nowhere more so than in the connections between brands and gen Z.
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The Psychology of Choice
Leading Edge January 16, 2025Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about customers as well as navigat¬ing through complex professional relationships, so understanding the psychology of choice can not only illuminate the cognitive biases and factors influencing people’s decisions but also provide valuable perspectives for both consumers and business leaders. Moreover, marketers can leverage this understanding to design more effective strategies that resonate with their target audiences and stakeholder groups.
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Reconfiguring Tomorrow: Cultural Trends Shaping 2025
Leading Edge January 16, 2025If history has taught us anything, it’s this: Purpose is not dead. Like an ethos of trust and connection and strategic planning to guide operations, it is simply waiting for a new form — one that feels more honest, more actionable and more aligned with where we are now.
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SEO and AI: Best Practices
Leading Edge January 16, 2025Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has long been regarded as one of the most effective digital marketing channels for delivering a high return on investment (ROI). In fact, Forrester predicts that “AI-integrated search will triple SEO budgets…as consumers increasingly trust organic, gen AI-powered summaries.”
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Finding Advertising’s Anchor in the Storm: Ahoy, TV
Leading Edge January 15, 2025None of us are strangers to turbulence. Today’s advertisers face real or perceived challenges in a time marked by unpredictable stock market fluctuations and an increasingly polarized political climate. The market volatility, driven by inflationary pressures, interest rate adjustments, and global economic uncertainties, is rippling across industries, making it tricky for companies to forecast and confidently allocate their advertising budgets. There’s a delicate balance between maintaining brand visibility and managing financial risks. It’s natural to go looking for an anchor.
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Humans and Machines: Why Brands Are Going Back to Real-Life Connections and Creativity
Leading Edge January 14, 2025There’s something undeniable about real-life experiences. In my role at Wanderlab, I’ve watched the shift firsthand. More and more, brands are realizing that while digital platforms are vital, it’s the tactile, human connection that leaves a lasting impression. After years of digital-first communication — especially during the pandemic — people are craving something deeper, something real. And brands are taking note.
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Creative Optimization Is All About Orchestration and Relevance
Leading Edge January 13, 2025Ad tech is ever-changing, a truth proven out by the short lifespan of some of its central terms. We have moved on from several integral shorthand phrases that found their way out of favor – like "online behavioral data” and "data management platform." More recently, we’ve seen the deprecation of platforms like Amazon Ad Server and Oracle Advertising. Meanwhile, there’s another term, enduring since the early days, that now flirts with obsolescence. That phrase is "dynamic creative optimization” which is too limited to describe its real meaning, and its critical importance for the current moment.
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Humanness: The Key to Strengthening Marketing Performance with Purpose
Leading Edge January 10, 2025What if the key to unlocking your next creative breakthrough wasn’t hidden in another dataset or AI tool, but in a different state of mind?
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Empowering Creators within the B2B Space
Leading Edge January 9, 2025Influencers have the power to capture audiences, build communities, and drive engagement. B2B brands are finally taking notice and realizing the immense potential of collaborating with these creative minds.
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Google Ads, SEM, and AI: Best Practices
Leading Edge January 9, 2025The U.S. search engine advertising (SEM) market, dominated by Google Ads, continues to grow and is expected to reach over $136 billion US dollars by 2026, according to Statista. Although digital marketing involves a seemingly limitless and evolving landscape such as X competitors Thread and BlueSky, social commerce, marketing technology and data privacy, digital marketers will continue to invest in channels with proven return on investment, like SEM and SEO. In fact, according to Forrester’s 2025 Budget Planning Guide, “B2C marketing executives are more optimistic than ever about their marketing budgets: 92 percent plan to increase their overall marketing investment in the next 12 months.”
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Scaling Chaos: Why Codifying Your Brand Is Vital for Survival in the Age of Gen AI
Leading Edge January 8, 2025Generative AI has the power to scale the success of a well-defined brand, and for those brands it will be truly transformative for all the right reasons. But it can also have the opposite effect on weaker brands, potentially exposing or highlighting flaws. Whether AI helps your brand soar or stumble depends hugely on how well you’ve codified it.
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The Flight to Quality Could Turn the Open Web into a Walled Garden
Leading Edge January 7, 2025In the past year, reports exposed the problem with MFA websites and advertisers began their “flight to quality,” rooting out questionable websites from their plans. Clearly, ensuring that advertisers only pay for inventory on real websites is a good thing. Not only should advertisers’ outcomes improve, focusing media spend on quality content ensures that publishers with integrity earn revenue, supporting their businesses and giving audiences better experiences and better information.
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As ChatGPT Turns Two, Have Marketers Bought into the AI Hype?
Leading Edge January 6, 2025As AI becomes faster and more advanced, marketers can run queries and develop campaigns much easier on user interfaces using natural language, simplifying activities and removing their reliance on platform experts to do this.
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Rewriting News Media’s Journey Forward
Leading Edge January 3, 2025Over the past few years, publishers have been on a roller coaster, navigating steep drops in revenue, sudden turns in ad demand, and a seemingly endless climb to capture the elusive attention of digital audiences. While headlines have painted a grim picture, suggesting that news as we know it is on the brink, the real story is much more complex — and, in some ways, surprisingly hopeful.
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How Agencies and Brands Create Successful Communications Strategies in 2025
Leading Edge January 3, 2025Across the media landscape, advertisers and marketers are encountering a seismic shift in media consumption patterns. Fragmentation is a challenge and an opportunity. It is one that is reshaping the traditional ways we reach audiences.
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Responsible Marketing: Getting It Wrong the Right Way
Leading Edge January 2, 2025For many brands, corporate fragility is the Achilles’ heel that prevents them from admitting wrongdoing or accepting criticism, even at the expense of their own credibility and integrity. Instead of embracing feedback as an opportunity for growth, fragile organizations recoil from criticism, opting to deflect blame or bury their heads in the sand. This defensive posture stems from the misguided belief that admitting fault is a sign of weakness rather than brand strength.
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From Advancing Through the Funnel to Forging Long-Term Relationships
Leading Edge December 30, 2024The question for marketers is no longer about how to guide consumers through the marketing funnel, but instead, how to build enduring, valuable relationships over time in a new era where trust is currency, and brands need repeat business to meaningfully succeed.
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Elevating Brand Relationships: A New Era of Purpose and Humanity
Leading Edge December 23, 2024Taken together, ongoing market uncertainty, shifting consumer sentiment and digital transformation are demanding a fundamental evolution in the operational ethos for purpose-led brand development. In our rapidly changing landscape, the ability to adapt while maintaining meaningful connections is more crucial than ever.
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