Digiday

We spoke with a recently displaced DEI director whose position at a 600-employee statewide financial institution was eliminated. In this conversation — part of our Confessions series, where we trade anonymity for candor — they share their insights on the current state of DEI in corporate America, including the dangers of the media and politicians misunderstanding DEI as “hiring unqualified individuals,” and how that creates pressure for companies, particularly those with government ties. They also share their views on why organizations need to build their DEI programs closely with legal teams from day one, and what the future might hold for DEI leaders in an increasingly uncertain landscape.

Rockstar Games is gearing up to make “Grand Theft Auto VI” the next big metaverse platform. When Rockstar releases “GTA 6” later this year, it won’t just be the biggest video game launch of the decade — the launch will represent “GTA’s” attempt to transform from a popular game series into a bona fide creator platform.

Every Adalytics report sparks debate around whether ad tech vendors and brand safety partners are properly managing advertiser dollars. But the latest? It hit a nerve. After Adalytics revealed ads from major brands were served alongside explicit and harmful content, attention from Congress has intensified the debates. Reactions range from especially loud critiques to especially noticeable silence since U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal sent letters this month to the CEOs of Google, Amazon, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, the Media Ratings Council, and Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG). Many in the industry have condemned weak transparency and accountability, while others point to systemic issues like misaligned incentives and self-regulation failures.

Less than two full months into 2025 — and with something like four to six months before its acquisition by Omnicom is consummated (if it’s consummated) — Interpublic Group (IPG) is experiencing challenges on an almost-unprecedented level. But the payoff in the end could be worth the trouble, since a merged company would easily be the biggest purveyor of principal media, which regardless of one’s opinions on the ethics of the practice, can make a holding company a lot of money. Here’s a walk-through of those challenges and opportunities IPG has in store.

Improving media mix modeling is a top priority for U.S. marketers, according to a 2024 EMARKETER study, with 61% claiming they’re working on making MMM “better and/or faster.” Doubtless, many hope to seize the benefits of AI, with some of the ad industry’s largest names like Amazon, Google and Meta backing open-source projects to help further adoption. Just last month, Google launched a new open-source marketing mix model (MMM) called Meridian, which is designed to help marketers measure performance across media. Some point to the proponents of open source large language models and hope it’s not a case of adland’s digital oligopoly building a better mousetrap to ensnare marketers’ budgets further — only this time employing the user-privacy narrative as a moat. It’s worth asking, or even re-asking, what is MMM in the era of online marketing as open-source LLMs, agents and other AI applications gain momentum?

After spending much of 2024 recovering from a down period, esports industry executives are stepping on the gas in anticipation of a growth year in 2025. In 2023, advertisers and investors alike jumped ship from competitive gaming, leading to the so-called esports winter, a period in which esports organizations consolidated or pivoted to new business models in order to stay afloat. Over the past 12 months, however, the industry has recovered, in part thanks to brands coming back into the space, as well as the updated revenue share programs created by the publishers of popular esports games. Emboldened by the success of new major esports events such as the Esports World Cup — and by an influx of investment by the Saudi Arabian government — esports industry leaders are projecting confidence going into 2025. Here’s a look into the best-case scenario for competitive gaming in the new year.

Generative AI was a big part of marketing discussions throughout 2024, as brands and agencies became eager to invest in AI tools to do everything from creating internal workflow efficiencies to producing consumer-facing ads. These discussions will continue into 2025, and a lot of the industry hype around the technology revolves around the potential for it to make marketers’ jobs easier, faster and more efficient. But some industry experts say there’s a risk of over-relying on automated ad creation. Another factor in the AI picture that will carry into the new year is the prospect of AI-generated or altered content being labeled as such. Marketers are hesitant to see “made with AI” labels slapped across their creative campaigns, as such a label doesn’t differentiate between content completely generated by AI or content in which AI tools were simply used to help during the creation process — despite the fact that those are two different things.

Marketers’ optimism around ad spend comes on the heels of a year in which nearly half of agencies saw their ad spending on behalf of clients increase. Forty-two percent of marketer pros said their companies’ ad spend on behalf of clients increased throughout 2024, Digiday’s survey found. Fewer than a third (31%) said that spending decreased in 2024. (It is worth noting here, though, that 40% of marketers said their ad spend on behalf of clients increased only somewhat in 2024, while just 2% said it increased significantly.) And this optimism is made stronger looking at the data for this year. Digiday’s survey found that nearly two-thirds of marketers (63%) said they expect their companies’ ad spending on behalf of clients to increase in 2025. Twenty percent said that spending won’t change this year, and just 16% said it will decrease.

The pendulum is starting to swing back to brand and a rethink of the traditional CMO-based marketing model. Marketing organizations within major brands are recognizing the damage they can do to their brands if they focus too much on performance marketing and too little on brand marketing. Marketers, agency execs and consultants said there’s a noticeable shift when talking to brand marketers — not only CMOs but those with the various titles that have started to replace the CMO title — where it’s clear that care for brand as well as performance is more apparent.  In this piece by Kristina Monllos, we speak to Dory Ellis Garfinkle of Siegel+Gale, Greg Paull of R3, Chris Plating of EP+Co, Kate Watts of 50,000feet, and Dave Snyder of SIBERIA.