Brands are financing vaccine misinformation
Hi and welcome to this weekly edition of Insider
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This week:
Advertisers are enabling misinformation
More than 4,315 brands ran ads on sites with COVID misinformation, according to new
- They're a who's who of corporate America - and even include some advertisers that are directly seeking to promote vaccines, like Pfizer, Walmart, and the CDC.
- The research further illustrates the unintended consequences of programmatic advertising - and of the role advertisers and adtech companies like Google and The Trade Desk play in enabling the spread of misinformation.
- Solutions aren't simple because of the multiple actors involved in digital ad placement.
- Some say advertisers need to take charge of where their dollars are going, while another camp says the burden is on adtech companies to fix the problem.
Read more: More than 4,000 advertisers including Pfizer, Walmart, and even the CDC ran ads alongside vaccine misinformation
Why private equity is pushing into agencies
- PE was involved in 42% of marketing and tech deals in 2019, up from 17% in 2017.
- In PR and PR software, such players represented 14% of buyers of firms for the past few years, up from 11% in 2016.
Financial buyers are warming to areas like e-commerce and data analytics, and traditional acquirers like ad holding companies are pausing deals during the downturn.
For some agencies, PE funding can help them react quickly to business trends and expand accordingly.
Still, it's easy to imagine cultural clashes ensue if PE firms, with their reputation for being profit-driven, go into creative-heavy firms like design and production firms.
Read more: Private equity firms are looking to snap up ad agencies as the pandemic grounds traditional buyers
Brunswick's gamble
Sean Czarnecki checked in on financial communications firm
It's another example of the lines between ad and consulting industries blurring as firms look to new areas for growth.
Some insiders questioned Brunswick's ability to pay the high salaries necessary to compete with established firms like Teneo, though.
Read more: PR firm Brunswick Group is scooping up execs from companies like Edelman and Grey as it tries to become the 'McKinsey of PR'
Other stories we're reading:
- Roku plans to produce original shows and feature films (Protocol)
- Bill Gates interview: The breakthrough technologies that will solve climate change, how to fund them, and what Biden can do to help (Business Insider)
- Facebook launches Black creator accelerator program 'We the Culture' (Variety)
- Leaked document shows Kaiser Permanente is shopping for agencies to handle its $85 million-plus ad business (Business Insider)
- Parler's new web host SkySilk explains why it's working with the controversial platform (New York Post)
Thanks for reading, and see you next week.
- Lucia
