What’s in an agency name? Usually, three guys’ last names, alphabet soup, or a word with all the vowels removed. Sometimes, a whimsical backstory.

Party Land, founded in 2018, was named after a party store in Santa Monica. Ice Cream Social, meanwhile, got its name from the vintage Good Humor truck that used to double as its office. Flower Shop’s office was once, you guessed it, a flower shop. And Quality Meats, though not based behind a deli counter, is meant to evoke the idea of a trusty butcher.

“I never really identified with brands or agencies that sounded like law firms,” said Matt Heath, co-founder and CCO of comedy-focused agency Party Land, who previously worked at agencies including TBWA\Chiat\Day, 72andSunny, and CAA. “I just want to have fun for a living, and starting an agency called Party Land felt like there was going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy there.”

The new wave of indie agency founders tend to have that mindset in common: Coming off years of experience working long hours at legacy agencies for major brands, seasoned ad execs are thinking outside the box, both when it comes to naming and how they do business.

Continue reading here.—AM

Marketers know that webinars are an attention-grabbing tool made for capturing leads, demonstrating product relevance, and driving adoption, to name a few perks.

That’s why the right webinar platform—one that offers a smooth all-in-one experience, provides robust analytics, and integrates with existing marketing tools—is invaluable. And that’s where Wistia Live comes in.

Wistia Live is a comprehensive…you guessed it…webinar feature in Wistia’s complete video platform. It’s made to deliver a seamless experience for hosting your live events, turning them into lead-gen tools, capturing social clips, and more.

Get your webinar-ing off to a running start with Wistia Live.

Ads that run on websites that make the C-suite blush are the ad industry’s ouroboros, a seemingly unsolvable problem that circles back around again and again.

And here we are once more: Two-thirds of advertisers unknowingly bought ads on websites deemed to contain “misinformation” between 2019 and 2021, according to researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon who published their findings in the journal Nature last month.

• Advertisers subsidized more than three-quarters of websites considered to contain misinformation by publisher rating company NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index, the researchers found.
• More than half (55%) of the 100 most active advertisers appeared on misinformation websites in that timeframe.

The study involved 9 million ads from more than 42,500 advertisers on 5,400 websites.

Same old story: Programmatic advertising, where advertisers bid on users and not the content ads appear next to, has for years resulted in ad placements on content deemed to be brand-unsafe, including Russian propaganda or fake news publishers.

Lately, though, concerns about ad dollars funding misinformation have taken a bit of a back seat to concerns about made-for-advertising, or clickbait, sites. Last year, a report from the Association of National Advertisers estimated that some $10 billion was wasted in the five months between September 2022 and January 2023.

Read more here.—RB

After a bumpy start to the summer box office, people are beginning to flock to the movies as the weather heats up. Disney’s Pixar film Inside Out 2 notched a $155 million opening weekend at the box office, the biggest since last year’s Barbie, and other anticipated titles like Deadpool & Wolverine are projected to bring in even more in ticket sales.

As theater attendance has slowly recovered since the height of the pandemic, more brands are advertising in movie theaters, too. Spending on out-of-home cinema advertising saw a 41% YoY increase in Q1 2024, according to data that Vivvix compiled for Marketing Brew.

A star-studded (advertising) affair: The data, which spans almost 4,000 movie theaters across the country, found that advertisers spent $42 million on cinema ads in the first quarter of 2024, an uptick from the $33 million spent a year prior, Vivvix found. Three sectors dominated that ad spend: public transportation, hotels, and resorts; communications; and insurance.

• The public transportation, hotels, and resorts category accounted for more than $31 million in ad spend, with the largest advertisers being Vrbo, Expedia, and Hotels.com.
• The communications industry hit almost $3 million in Q1 cinema ad spend, with Samsung leading the way.
• Insurance firms dropped $1.8 million in Q1 cinema ad spend, with Allstate and Progressive accounting for a combined 99% of that total.

In 2023, the category of public transportation, hotels, and resorts was one of the top three sectors spending on cinema ads, too; the other two sectors were automotive and beer and wine, according to Vivvix. Among those two sectors, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Mazda, and Coors were among the biggest brand spenders.—JS

The Marketing Brew Summit is back for year three, and as you know, good things come in threes—Jonas Brothers, Powerpuff Girls, and seasons of Ted Lasso. Join us on September 12 in NY, where you’ll hear from industry leaders at Cava, Lyft, e.l.f., and many more on how forward-thinking brands leverage all the tools to stay ahead.