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Agencies and platforms look for a place within the retail media ecosystem
Retail media has been forecasted to be a major area of investment in 2023, and several companies began the year by staking their claim to a piece of the market.
On the agency side, Horizon Media’s ecommerce arm Night Market launched Neon, a platform to help brands buying retail media maximize their revenue outcomes using AI and predictive analytics. This is meant to fill knowledge gaps among advertisers that still lack the experience with retail media to make informed investment decisions, as well as better understand where spending is performing best.
On the platform side, Microsoft announced that it is piloting its own retail ad network, alongside improvements and new features for its existing retail-focused offerings. Salesforce also announced a service aimed at integrating CRM data already on its platform into retail media ad buys.
CBC names new CRO and head of Media Solutions division
Media veteran Donald Lizotte will retire as general manager and chief revenue officer of CBC & Radio-Canada Media Solutions at the end of March, with Hisham Ghostine tapped to take over the role.
Ghostine will oversee all teams associated with CBC/Radio-Canada’s self-generated revenue, which includes advertising, distribution and content licensing. Ghostine joined CBC in 2021 as executive director of sales, marketing and Olympics. He had digital monetization added to his title six months late.
Since taking over the Media Solutions group at the beginning of 2020, one of Lizotte’s major tasks was steering two Olympics broadcasts in the space of six months.
Media assignment among series of new Telus RFPs
Telus has begun a set of invite-only RFPs as it seeks new creative, strategic and media partners to complement its existing roster and help the growing company meet all of its marketing needs.
The RFPs are not meant to replace The&Partnership and Cossette on the telco’s agency roster, but rather strengthen its bench to supplement their work: Telus is seeking agencies to handle tier 2 and tier 3 creative production and digital media, as well as a national and integrated media strategy and planning partner.
Tier 2 creative is adapting design and creative into new platforms, such as from print to digital. Tier 3 creative is repurposing creative and making new ad versions. The&Partnership will continue to handle tier 1 work – high-level creative and strategy – for the Telus masterbrand and mobility businesses, but the telco is opening up its other lines of business for potential new partners through the RFP process.
Telus will invite Cossette to participate in areas representative of the agency’s core competencies, Mack says.
TSN launches a new streaming service
TSN acquired the Canadian rights to golf-focused streaming service PGA Tour Live, making it the cornerstone of a new sports-focused streaming service dubbed TSN+.
Focused largely on a giving a streaming home to sports and events that might not have broadcast homes through other channels, TSN+ features golf, the NTT Indycar Series events, La Liga and LaLiga 2 soccer matches, XFL football games, PHF women’s hockey league, National Lacrosse League and boxing matches. It will also have access to TSN’s library of sports documentaries.
TSN+ will also broadcast a number of exclusive feeds that are meant to supplement the main broadcasts of games and sporting events. These include stats and alternate angles for NFL games, companion feeds for NASCAR and F1 races and special streaming-only feeds from different courts during Grand Slam tennis events.
Finally, TSN+ will also give viewers access to games from leagues and sporting organizations with which TSN has broadcast relationships, but does not air on national televised feeds, such as NBA games between U.S. teams, CHL hockey games and NCAA basketball and football games, as well as and AEW Rampage.
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More layoffs hit tech and media companies
The massive layoffs seen in the tech sector late last year extended into 2023, but also hit more traditional media companies amid an economic downtown.
After managing to hold out long compared to other ad-supported tech giants, Google parent company Alphabet announced it would laying off 12,000 staff from its offices globally in an effort to cut costs. Microsoft also announced plans to cut 10,000 staff. That was followed by Spotify laying off 6% of its global staff, a move that came with the departure of chief content and advertising business officer Dawn Ostroff, who led the company’s push into podcasting in recent years.
Postmedia announced last month that it would be laying off 11% of its editorial staff, a move that would impact all of its news properties as it further attempts to bring down costs. Other cost-cutting measures the company announced last month was moving a dozen community newspapers in Alberta to an online-only format, selling the Calgary Herald building and outsourcing printing operations for several of its other newspapers.
Home Depot found to have improperly shared customer data with Meta
An investigation conducted by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada determined that Home Depot Canada had provided Meta with customer email addresses and purchase data as part of an ad measurement program, without informing customers about how this data would be used.
Since 2018, Home Depot Canada has collected customer emails at checkout, with the stated purpose being for sending electronic purchase receipts. However, the commission found that Home Depot also provided those emails and related in-store purchase data to Meta, which would match the email to a Facebook account to see which ads they might have seen prior to their purchase, part of Facebook’s Offline Conversions platform.
While participating in the platform does not contravene privacy regulations, the commission’s investigation found that Home Depot had not properly informed customers that it was collecting data for these activities.
Home Depot is co-operating with the recommendations, and stopped the practice with Meta in October. The retailer also agreed to only resume the practice if it obtains prior opt-in consent from customers.
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EssenceMediacom officially launches
First announced in April of last year, GroupM completed its combination of Essence and Mediacom, creating the network’s largest agency with 10,000 staff (the Canadian headcount is over 275 between Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver).
The merger is meant to bring Essence’s data and performance capabilities together with Mediacom’s fully scaled, multi-channel planning expertise. and has been completed over the last nine months. The combined agency is meant to bring Essence’s performance, data, analytics and creative technology capabilities together with Mediacom’s scaled, multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise.
“The future of marketing is outcomes-driven, underpinned by a solid base of data and analytics,” Urania Agas, CEO of EssenceMediacom Canada and Kevin Johnson, CEO of GroupM Canada, said in a joint statement. “What we’ve built will provide media solutions rooted in both, breaking through the clutter of today’s new communications economy.”
Globally, the client roster includes Google, NBCUniversal, Mars, Adidas, and the Coca-Cola Company. In Canada, the agency’s local client list includes Aldo, Uber, CIBC and the Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation.
Now Magazine acquired by Gonez Media
Gonez Media finalized an acquisition of Now Magazine’s digital assets in January, re-launching the Toronto alt-weekly as a digital-only outlet later the same month. The company said the major focus in coverage would be returning to Now’s roots in art, music and entertainment, but also explore new topics and communication channels, such as content on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.
An independent publication for most of its 42-year history, Now Magazine was acquired by Media Central in late 2019. Amid the struggles of the pandemic and reports of staff being owed back pay, Media Central filed for bankruptcy in March 2022.
A spokesperson for Gonez Media told MiC at the time of the acquisition that, as the sale was for Now’s digital assets and not its contracts or debt, it would not be bringing on any former Now staffers and would not be covering back pay owed. Gonez has been hiring a new editiorial team for Now that it says “reflect[s] the diversity of Toronto.”
Deadline extended for Rogers-Shaw merger
As Rogers and Shaw continued to ask regulators to approve their proposed merger, one common refrain was that Jan. 31 was the absolute latest decisions could come. Any later than that, and the deal was at risk of falling apart.
But as Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne continued to make considerations in his decision, the companies announced they had secured a small amount more time, with a new deadline of Feb. 17.
After a court upheld a decision by the Competition Tribunal, Minister Champagne’s approval is the last regulatory hurdle the companies need to clear in order to finalize their deal, which was first announced nearly two years ago. More specifically, approval is required in order to transfer wireless licenses from Shaw to Videotron, which has agreed to acquire the former’s Freedom Mobile brand as part of a resolution to maintain competition in the wireless sector after Rogers and Shaw become one company.
