| Good morning marketers, will ad spend bounce back in the second-half of the year?
eMarketer thinks so. Worldwide ad spending is still expected to grow compared to last year, says research firm eMarketer – but the company has revised its model to lower growth projections by nearly 3%. Worldwide media ad spend will increase by 7.0% to $691.7 billion in 2020 over the prior year, down from the earlier growth estimate of 7.4% to $712.02 billion. The updated spend projections, released Thursday last week, include figures for digital, directories, as well as print, out-of-home, TV and radio advertising. Last month, WPP, the holding company of agencies like Oglivy, GroupM and Kantar, released its annual earnings results for 2019 and announced a particularly interesting objective for the future: “In the next two years, we plan to train 50,000 people to be able to articulate the power of artificial intelligence and its value to clients, and to accredit 5,000 data scientists, engineers and creative technologists in the key marketing technologies.” Let’s be honest: training a full staff on AI is no easy task, but to undertake an initiative to train 50,000 people is something that takes enormous coordination. From breaking down tech barriers to spreading access to data and analytics across the organization, WPP’s CTO Stephan Pretorius lifts the curtain on the company’s large-scale AI training plans and how his team plans to tackle the initiative. Also, for those in search marketing, join Search Engine Land for our live-streamed video meetup today at 2 p.m. EST. Barry Schwartz will lead the discussion with SEOs Pedro Dias, Lily Ray, Alexis Sanders as well as Daniel Waisberg of Google who will be chatting SEO, trends — and answering reader questions. Submit your question here. There’s more news below – including an update on what’s going on in the adtech world, along with a Mindful Moment exercise to keep you balanced in these challenging times. Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor | 