The 10 things in advertising you need to know today
1. Saatchi & Saatchi chairman and Publicis Groupe head coach Kevin Roberts is resigning. The announcement follows controversial comments he made about gender diversity in the advertising industry.
2. People have complained a new Sprite ad is "sexist" and "degrading." Lines from the campaign, which is running in Ireland, include "She's seen more ceilings than Michelangelo," "You're not popular… you're easy," and "A 2 at 10 is a 10 at 2."
3. Victoria's Secret's top competitor released a lingerie ad that's unlike anything else we've seen from a major retailer. Half of the women who appear in the ad had never even been on a photo shoot before.
4. Ad tech company Sizmek has been acquired by private equity firm Vector Capital for $122 million, the firms announced in a press release on Wednesday. Sizmek is an ad management platform that claims to work with 19,000 advertisers and 3,700 agencies worldwide. It has around 1,000 employees.
5. Rubicon Project admitted it had been slow to jump on the header bidding trend. As a result, many analysts downgraded Rubicon Project stock and its share price was down more than 30% on Wednesday.
6. Unruly has released data on the 10 most popular Olympics ads so far. Channel 4's "We're The Superhumans" Paralympics teaser leads the pack with a whopping 1,256,567 shares
7. Time Warner is buying 10% of Hulu. It spent about $580 million on that stake, according to sources.
8. A rumor that Steve Ballmer and Saudi Arabia's Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal were about to buy Twitter drove the stock up 9% on Wednesday. But SunTrust analyst Robert Peck said it's unlikely to happen.
9. London music startup Crowdmix has been sold to billionaire property tycoon Nick Candy. The company went into administration in July after it was unable to pay its creditors, and wages also went unpaid.
10. Here's how the BBC is gearing up for the Olympics. The Zika virus, terrorism, and time zones are just some of the things the UK public service broadcaster has had to prepare for.