Digital marketing as we know it is going through a rapid period of change, driven mostly by advancements in technologies. Automation has become an essential tool for digital marketers as it helps to streamline processes, find new target audiences, and even generate more conversions.

With all these shifts, one thing is clear—automation works best when combined with a strategic human lens. As a performance marketer, you lead the way, stay in control, and automation helps you achieve your desired outcomes.

To help you leverage the power of automation, on April 24th, manual bidding will no longer be available for new campaigns on the Microsoft Audience Network. Starting on April 24th, all existing image and feed campaigns on a manual cost per click (CPC) bid strategy will upgrade to Enhanced CPC (eCPC). This upgrade will be completed by April 28th.

Enhanced CPC has been proven to elevate your performance

Benefits of Enhanced CPC

• With Enhanced CPC, you set your ad group bids, and Microsoft Advertising automatically adjusts your bids in real time to increase your chances for a conversion. Your bid will go higher on auctions that are more likely to convert and lower on auctions less likely to convert.
• The base bids you continue to set will always be honored as the primary lever by the bidding strategy. Those bids will be optimized at the time of the auction to maximize performance and drive towards more conversions, allowing you to stay on top of the dynamic marketplace.
• When using eCPC, your average CPC won’t exceed the base bid that you set.
• eCPC uses many different auction signals to help drive the best results, including search queries, bid modifiers, location, device, ad copy, and many more. All these combined signals help drive informed decisions for better advertiser performance.
• eCPC works in combination with any technology providers that you use to manage campaigns. eCPC will always use the bids set by your bid management tool as a starting point before applying any adjustment.

Timeline for upgrading to eCPC

The transition from manual bidding to eCPC starts on April 24th. Any new campaigns created on the Microsoft Audience Network will no longer see the option for manual bidding. On April 24th, we’ll start upgrading all existing campaigns on the Microsoft Audience Network to eCPC. This transition will be completed by April 28th and throughout this week, any campaigns using manual CPC will move to eCPC.

This change only affects image and feed campaigns on manual CPC, it doesn’t impact video campaigns using manual CPC or campaigns using manual cost per view (CPV) or cost per mille (CPM) bid strategies. The migration is for standalone audience campaigns (image and feed ads).

This doesn’t impact search campaigns extended to the Microsoft Audience Network that already leverage eCPC and our full suite of automated bidding solutions.

Getting prepared

There’s no action required from you to prepare for this change. However, there are some areas that you can optimize to ensure you’re set up for success:

• Conversion tracking: For best results, we strongly recommend using eCPC in conjunction with conversion tracking. Validate that you have your Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag on all pages of the site and that you have set up your conversion goals. Although this isn’t a requirement for eCPC, it can help improve performance by providing more signals.
• Offline conversions: If you rely on offline conversions, it’s recommended to upload your offline conversion data daily. This can be done easily by using a scheduled recurring import.
• Attribution model: Consider changing your conversion goal attribution to “last touch”. This will allow you to optimize automated bidding based on both click-based and view-through conversions (conversions as a result of ad impressions). When users see native ads, they don’t always click right away, but viewing this ad plays an important role in influencing their behavior and their path to conversion.

Last touch conversion attribution model settings.

As we strive to empower you with new automation tools, we’re committed to investing more in our automated bidding solutions on the Microsoft Audience Network. In the coming months, we’ll be releasing additional automated bidding strategies, such as Target CPA and Maximize Conversions. Work with your Microsoft Advertising account team or our support team to start testing these bid strategies when they become available.

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WPP has joined the Media Freedom Cohort, comprising the likes of Associated Press, The New York Times, Microsoft, Google, BBC Media Action, Free Press Unlimited and more than 25 governments “to advance media freedom.”

The Media Freedom Cohort was established during President Biden’s 2021 Summit for Democracy to support free and independent media worldwide.

WPP’s media operation GroupM says it will:

*Create dedicated marketplaces exclusively with domains vetted by Internews’ Ads for News for responsible journalism across our top markets.

*Drive awareness among our clients and the wider industry about the importance of investing in responsible journalism.

*Add the domains for responsible journalism in local media supply offered to clients.

Mark Read, CEO of WPP, says: “Independent journalism plays a vital role around the world and we are pleased to be able to support that through GroupM. We look forward to working with the Media Freedom Cohort to ensure a diversity of credible media outlets worldwide.”

Christian Juhl, CEO of GroupM says: “A healthy media ecosystem depends on a thriving news business that supports journalists and incentivizes fact-based reporting. As the world’s leading media investment organization, we’re proud to support the work of the Media Freedom Cohort through our global partnership with Internews and commitment to investing in responsible journalism.”

WPP, which spends $60bn of client money worldwide, has already committed to supporting bona fide media with investment although it’s hard to determine how much and where.

One suspects a counter to Russia’s incessant campaigns of disinformation may be part of Biden’s thinking.

NEW YORK — Remerge launched Agency Activators – a partnership program empowering media and brand agencies to become qualified leaders in the programmatic in-app advertising market.

Remerge, which ranks as the top global player for mobile re-engagement campaigns after Meta and Google, will share the inner workings of its technology and offer workshops to equip members with expertise to grow their clients’ app revenues.

The first agencies to join the program are M&C Saatchi Performance, Headlight, Phiture, Lemmonet, WITHIN, Publicis’ Spark Foundry, alongside growth transformation partner Winclap.

Steve Massaro, Director of Channel Alliances, Remerge:

“I’ve been in agency-centric roles for most of my career and can say that the relevance and influence of these companies in the mobile industry have never been greater. In the app ecosystem, where new creative formats, economic pressures, and privacy changes are constantly changing the landscape, the value our agency partners bring to our shared clients is continuously becoming more apparent.

Remerge’s Agency Activators program will increase that strategic value through tailored educational sessions that build on our members’ programmatic knowledge and guide them through newer innovations. We’re offering masterclasses on fundamental areas of mobile marketing, ranging from incrementality to creative strategy, and more.

Coupling this training with access to logistical and commercial benefits unique to this program has already proved to be successful for our members, who are helping teams tap into Remerge’s solutions to drive growth for their clients’ apps.”

As programmatic ad spending soars and brands make bigger investments in mobile, marketers are looking for partners who can help them navigate the industry.

Pan Katsukis, Co-founder and CEO, Remerge:

“We’re seeing more brands enter the mobile space and get serious about programmatic advertising. Performance marketing and developing deeper levels of in-app engagement are often new territories for these organizations. We’re creating an environment where leading agencies can enhance their understanding of the market and learn how to scale their clients’ business.”

Agency Activators is active in the Americas and will expand to Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa and Middle East markets.

Adrienne Rice, Director of Media Investment, M&C Saatchi Performance:

“Recent market developments have made it harder for mobile businesses to find their way in the programmatic advertising industry and make informed decisions about where to allocate budget to grow revenues. App marketing is a rapidly evolving concept, and our clients need partners who know how to unlock its potential. The expert support, resources, and benefits we get from Remerge’s agency partnership program ensure we can deliver results for our clients.”

Learn more about Remerge’s Agency Activators program.

GroupM UK and EMEA CEO Josh Krichefski is the new president of the UK’s IPA agency trade body and his mantra for his two-year term is: “Let’s support a resilient, thriving and mentally healthy workforce.”

Krichefski (above) wants to attract more and better people to the ad industry, widely deemed to be suffering a talent shortage. Krichefski began banging this particular drum in pre-lockdown times as UK boss of Mediacom (now EssenceMediacom.)

Krichefski says; “We don’t have factories, trucks, manufactured goods. Our people are everything. It’s their brilliance and imagination which is what makes us who and what we are. And that’s why we have to look after them. Let’s take the steps needed to create the most inclusive workplaces imaginable. And let’s support a resilient, thriving and mentally healthy workforce and empower them to write the future of advertising.”

This, of course, is the supply side of the advertising economy, the trouble can often be the demand side. One of the reasons adland is deemed to be an unduly stressful place to be these days is overall demand (there’s a lot more competition for marketing dollars, chiefly from tech-based contenders) and the particular demands of clients who are much keener on project-based relationships that cost them less money.

Then there’s the aftershock of the pandemic and consequent work from home. People are far less keen to find their way into the office five days a week (seven days if there’s a pitch on), supposing they can find a means of getting there with transport strikes and ever more traffic restrictions.

And the money….in adland’s “golden era” the money was very good indeed for many. Now it isn’t especially although Krichefski’s ultimate boss WPP CEO Mark Reqd has just seen his pay rise to nearly £7m.

All this is a pretty big circle to square for Krichefski in just two years in a voluntary role. Like his predecessors he’ll probably achieve a bit but the same problems will doubtless face his successor. Unless client/agency relationships can, somehow or other, be magically reset.

“Although AI is a sexy topic with a lot of hype, it still does not respond well to anomalies the way a human can,” said Robert Byrne, director of consumer and industry insights for Technomic, a restaurant consultancy. “So it works very well until it doesn’t, and those moments of failure can be very disruptive. It takes time for training data to capture enough anomalous information to minimize disruptions, but there is never a guarantee that it won’t encounter something new. Something as common as wind could distort a voice and cause it to go all ‘Johnny Five is alive,’ get confused and blow a circuit,” he said, referring to the 1986 robot movie “Short Circuit.”

Byrne is skeptical that voice AI can accomplish all it promises. “In essence, a low-trained, quiet-quitting employee is still probably less error-prone given the current circumstances,” he said. “That doesn’t mean [AI] won’t work someday, but today it is still in a development cycle that hasn’t [been] completed and may never be. … Tesla has always seemed to be about two weeks away from fully autonomous vehicles—and then they encounter an anomaly which ends badly.” 

Related: A generative AI guide for brands

Upselling stuffed cheesy bread

But supporters of the technology say one advantage of AI is the ability to upsell customers, turning sandwiches into combo meals and small drinks into larger ones, for instance.

For Shane Graham, a Domino’s franchisee based in Lexington, North Carolina with three restaurants, turning phone orders over to ConverseNow’s AI saved his workers—mostly part-time teenagers—from taking orders over the phone. It was an aspect of the job they had little interest in, nor performed particularly well at, according to Graham.

“The computer upsells, and it does it every time,” Graham said. “It doesn’t say ‘this customer doesn’t sound like they want a Stuffed Cheesy Bread or an ice-cold Coca-Cola.’ And instead of saying ‘ice-cold Coca-Cola,’ a 16-year-old says, ‘Do you want a Coke?’  There’s a difference. AI can ask whether a customer wants extra cheese on a pizza. A 16-year-old isn’t doing that effectively 100% of the time.”

Graham said the system has helped to “protect” his company’s bottom line. While average order values and profits have increased, higher costs for ingredients and supply chain woes have pressured profits. The system had no upfront costs, but Graham pays a per-order fee to ConverseNow.

Hackbardt of Del Taco said it is still too early to determine the effects of upselling in its automated drive-thru lanes but that it looked promising. “Our initial small tests certainly show significant upsell promise and a consistent upsell delivery well beyond the traditional order-taking method,” he said. “Most importantly, the AI allows our team to be super focused on preparing orders and making sure they are accurate and delivered quickly in the drive-thru which is the convenience and quality experience our guests desire.”

As well as being a holy month for Muslims, Ramadan is gaining cultural traction in the UK. There are Ramadan lights in Piccadilly Circus, a Ramadan Pavilion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and a Premier League-sanctioned a pause during matches for footballers to break their fast (Iftar) if they are playing at sunset.

There are usually a few advertisers who get involved, notably adam&eveDDB’s 2021 “Ramadan League” campaign for EA Sports. This year, Mother has built a database of shifting sunset timings across the UK, and deployed dynamic OOH to alter its ads across the whole month.

Around 88% of British Muslims live in big cities, so Mother has targeted London, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow.

Can Akar, head of EMEA marketing at Uber, said: “Our new Ramadan campaign not only celebrates the amazing dishes that are at the heart of Iftar dinners but also but also reminds our Muslim customers with date and city-specific Iftar times so they can schedule their deliveries for enjoying delicious Iftar meals”.

“Solar presents a more formal offering that operationalizes Hello Sunshine’s trust, influence, and deep expertise with female consumers,” Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden said in a statement. Solar will be overseen by Maureen Polo, Hello Sunshine’s head of direct to consumer, and Jennifer Wiener will be senior VP, working with Teneille Craig, VP of creative. 

Havas launches Play network

Havas has unveiled Havas Play, a global network that consolidates Havas’ expertise in music, sports, gaming and other fandom areas. The network unites Havas’ existing services in these areas under one brand to scale across the holding company’s major markets. 

Havas Play will provide strategy, ideation, creative, production and project management including partnerships, influencer marketing, experiential and live events, sponsorships, social media activation and amplification and branded entertainment. With the launch, the holding company will retire its Havas Sports & Entertainment brands unit.

“Clients of Havas Play will have unparalleled access to create meaningful experiences in collaboration with the cultural influencers that command their consumers’ attention and passion,” Yannick Bolloré, chairman and CEO of Havas, said in a statement.

The network’s first client is Harman International, which appointed Havas as global agency of record across media and creative in late 2022. The launch of Havas Play expands the relationship to include global gaming agency of record. 

Elsewhere at Havas … 

Creative agency Havas London has named James Fox CEO. Fox fills the role after Xavier Rees was named to UK Group CEO of Havas Creative in 2022. Fox will continue to report to Rees.

Fox was most recently chief client officer. While in that role, he successfully defended The Open University account following a pitch and was integral to new business wins including the Department for the Economy’s Further Education business and substantial growth of major accounts including Molson Coors and Asda, according to a statement by Havas. He joined Havas after seven years at Omnicom agency Lucky Generals, where in 2017 he was appointed its first managing director. 

“In Fox, we’ve found a true modern leader: competitive yet compassionate, and someone who instinctively gets what it takes to build a thriving culture within a progressive, 21st-century agency,” said Rees.

The company hasn’t made plans yet to fill Fox’s previous role, according to a spokesman for Havas.

VCCP is launching yet another division, this one is called BEE and is dedicated to brand and employee engagement — a hot topic during a talent crisis, and at a time when escalating numbers of staff take to social media to vent their frustrations with an employer.

Only 9% of employees are apparently engaged at work, which is where VCCP BEE comes in, with an offer to help companies attract and retain talent by “unifying the brand and employee experience” with help from its other divisions to bring in behavioural science, data, AI, branding, design, film, social, digital and experiential.

The offering is led by Huw Morgan, director of brand and employee engagement. He was previously at PR and social agency Good Relations, and has worked with brands including Channel 4, TfL, Johnson & Johnson, New Look and Asahi.

Morgan said: “Whether businesses are confronting turbulence or riding a wave of growth, VCCP’s integrated model enables us to uniquely challenge brands to consistently treat their people like valued customers, to attract talent and keep them informed, engaged and motivated.”

Adrian Coleman, founder and Group CEO at VCCP, said: “Our mission at VCCP is to challenge the bad habits of the industry and BEE is our latest example of this.”

According to The Society for Human Resource Management, it costs up to 60% of an employee’s salary to replace them, and even more if you take other factors like impact on culture, morale and knowledge into account.

Roblox also added clearer guidelines on how gamers should identify what is sponsored content. Developers must use “simple and understandable language” to indicate an ad, such as “ad”, “paid” or “sponsored.” Merely referencing the name of an advertiser is no longer enough.

Numerous brands could be in violation of these new rules, as pointed out by the watchdog organization Truth in Advertising (TINA). Netflix, for example, launched a “Stranger Things” experience on Roblox whose only indicator that it was a sponsored game was the statement, “By Netflix.” Nike’s popular world, “Nikeland,” which has been visited millions of times, also displays inadequate disclosures, according to TINA. Neither Netflix nor Nike immediately responded to a request for comment. 

More broadly, Roblox’s new Advertising Standards provide guidelines on how advertisers should appear on the platform. This new section in Roblox’s rule book outlines advertiser and publisher integrity, such as more details on ad transparency, as well as prohibited advertising content. Cryptocurrency and NFTs, for example, cannot be promoted, nor can multi-level marketing organizations, financial services, online dating services, politics and more. Many of these types of content were not previously outlined as prohibited in Roblox’s rule book.

Clarification is also provided on how marketers should work with Roblox’s new Immersive Ad units, which the platform rolled out last September. For example, portal ads transport users to other Roblox experiences, but these portals cannot mislead users about that destination, the platform states.