In what has become a rite of spring, CBS on Thursday announced it has renewed 18 series for next season. Eighteen appears to be Nina Tassler’s lucky number, as this marks the third consecutive year the CBS entertainment chairman has locked in that many renewals in March.
Earlier this afternoon, Seton Hall guard Sterling Gibbs hit a last-second shot to help his college basketball team upset Villanova, and marketers for New York Life and NBC immediately purchased Promoted Tweets around related hashtags appearing on Twitter.
The Playa del Rey, Calif. office of TBWA\Chiat\Day is laying off about 24 employees or roughly 5 percent of its total staff of 450, sources said. The downsizing comes after the Omnicom Group agency, once the Pepsi's brand lead agency in the U.S., saw its responsibilties shrink on the brand. The cut also comes after the office came up short in Wells Fargo's creative review, which sister shop won on Tuesday. A TBWA\C\D rep could not be reached for comment. The L.A.
After two weeks of soft ratings, A&E has taken the new Chloë Sevigny crime drama Those Who Kill out of commission. The network plans to re-launch the series at a later date, and in a new timeslot. (Having passed on the Michael Bay pilot Occult last fall, A&E has a lot riding on Those Who Kill, which is its lone new scripted series. The fate of the Leslie Greif comedy pilot, Whitey, is still up in the air.) Those Who Kill bowed Monday, March 3, to just 1.44 million viewers and a 0.5 rating in the adults 18-49 demo.
Those Facebook autoplay video ads—well, call them Premium Video Ads. That’s what the social network just announced it would label the long-anticipated marketing tool that delivers video right into users’ feeds and starts playing 15-second clips automatically.
In a perfect world, the Network Advertising Initiative's annual compliance report would have come out before 60 Minutes trashed the data tracking and collection on the Web for interest-based advertising. The report details how 88 Internet ad networks like Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft comply with the organization's strict self-regulatory privacy code to ensure that consumer choices are honored and data privacy is protected. It dispels, in part, many of the myths that tracking on the Web is completely lawless and unregulated.
Twitter’s Richard Alfonsi, head of global online sales, said that the next mobile ad products on the platform will be ones that drive consumers to act right within their tweets—email signups and app downloads. So, Twitter, already known as a place for brand messaging, is focused on this direct response advertising, too. Alfonsi sat down with Adweek to share what Twitter is working to deliver marketing-wise.
GroupM's John Montgomery is headed for the White House this afternoon along with about 20 others in the Internet advertising business, including Dick O'Brien of the 4A's and the IAB's Mike Zaneis, to talk about big data and privacy issues. The meeting is one of a series set up by White House advisor John Podesta, who was tasked by President Obama with conducting a comprehensive review of big data and privacy in the wake of the growing controversy over government surveillance.
Robert Redford wants to restore the Colorado River Delta, which has dried up severely over the past century, to its former lush glory through the "Raise the River" project. Will Ferrell wants to tell him where to stick it. Ferrell, you see, has his own plan. He doesn't want to bring the river back to the ocean. He wants to bring the ocean to the river—for the sake of the surfers.
Specs Who (Clockwise, from top) Bill Gullan, president; John Ferreira, vp of brand strategy; Daniel Erlbaum, CEO; Jordan Goldenberg, creative director What Brand design and strategy firm Where Philadelphia office In 2011, Fathead approached branding firm Finch Brands with a dilemma. The company was well-known for its oversized vinyl decals of NFL stars, but its other offerings weren’t being properly leveraged.
