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Transparency (or the lack of it) in programmatic buying was the elephant in the room last week at Marketing magazine’s AD-Vantage Programmatic Trading Conference. And Ian Hewetson, VP of Client Services for ad server and demand-side platform Eyereturn Marketing, made sure to address it during his morning keynote session.

“You’ve got a lot of different players in almost every single programmatic buy,” Hewetson (pictured, right) told a packed room on Tuesday March 31 at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon in the Toronto Reference Library. “You’ve got the site, the supply-side platform (SSP), the exchange, a demand-side platform (DSP), maybe you have a verification vendor, maybe you’ve got third-party data in there, and an agency trading desk too.

The fundamental reason CMOs and their legions of marketers exist is to create brand loyalty, but this in and of itself is becoming an irrelevant and dated concept.

Increasingly, especially in Canada, it appears marketers are becoming devoid of brand zealots, who define and passionately champion and protect their brands.

This is partly attributed to the repatriation of packaged goods marketing to America. At one time Canadian offices of American multi-nationals recruited and trained brand managers to champion their brands in Canada.

Canadians are consuming more media than ever before. Although the weather as of late has made me wonder if I’m single-handedly driving up our national average with my Netflix binging, turns out that’s not the case. Canadians not only have more opportunities to consume content through the ever-expanding number of connected devices at their disposal, […]

What kind of crazy Alternate Advertising Universe just hit us? In one weird decision, the CRTC are out to make broadcasters and cable companies jump through hoops so that… wait for it…so that the people can see American TV commercials. On TV. During a TV show. I mean, as far as I can tell I […]

Canadian TV debuted on September 6th, 1952, when CBC launched CBFT in Montreal and CBLT in Toronto. Some of the first advertisers were Ford, Campbell’s Soup, Westinghouse and Imperial Tobacco. Less than 10 years later, census data showed that 82.5% of Canadian households had TVs – more than had flush toilets. Even in 1996, 76% […]

This week, the Association of Canadian Advertisers published their new guidebook: Searching For A Marketing Communications Agency Partner: A Guidebook for Marketers on Agency Searches. As its author, I was privileged to have the opportunity to spend many hours talking and debating with the ACA team, marketers and agencies, and gathering various viewpoints, identifying new […]