What you need to know in advertising today
Ad agencies are starting to fight back.
Giant consulting firms like Accenture and Deloitte have been increasingly encroaching on agencies' turf. In fact, several have been buying their way into advertising through creative acquisitions.
Now agencies are starting to respond by going down a similar route.
A growing number of large traditional ad agencies are looking to lay claim to an ability to offer consulting services - promising not just to make ads and buy media, but help improve their clients' business.
To read more about how agencies are making acquisitions and reorganizing to compete with consultancies, click here.
In other news:
Snapchat is stalling out, and there's not much hope that it'll get back on track. It's losing users, revenue growth is slowing markedly, and things look like they'll only get worse from here.
Amazon's Alexa is making it convenient to order generic products - and it poses a huge threat to brands and advertisers. A new report from the ad agency Digitas found that 85% of consumers had picked the default product result rather than the specific brand they requested when conducting a voice shopping search.
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman have raised $1 billion for a new mobile video startup - and there's a whole bunch of reasons to believe it's going to be a flop. A long, torturous history of original web projects shows this concept has been attempted numerous times, and rarely succeeded.
Starbucks stores are already receiving Pumpkin Spice Latte supplies, and people think they've figured out the PSL's return date. The top guess for this year's Pumpkin Spice Latte launch date is August 28.
Disney earnings miss as programming costs surge and ESPN subscribers decline. The company's cable-networks business has been under pressure as viewers shift to streaming services like Netflix.
AT&T has acquired Chernin's Otter Media, reports the New York Times. The deal is valued at more than $1 billion and contains properties like Crunchyroll, VRV, Fullscreen and Rooster Teeth.