How the Ad Industry Is Navigating Immigration Policies

The ad industry looks for the best talent in every corner of the world. David Ogilvy is one of the shining examples: In 1938, he arrived in New Jersey from his native England and build an advertising empire. But during President Donald Trump’s administration, bringing and keeping foreign employees stateside has become more difficult.

With thousands of foreign employees, the industry has had to be nimble. Those caught flat-footed are often stuck in the middle of a complex political web.

Read more: This week’s cover story shows how agencies are navigating the visa process and what they’ve done to generally dodge any political crossfire.

In April, Publicis bought Epsilon for $4.4 billion, less than a year after IPG agreed to purchase Acxiom for $2.3 billion. And in 2016, IPG rival Dentsu Aegis Network spent $1 billion on a majority stake in Merkle, a performance marketing outfit with expertise in digital, search and customer-relationship-management data services.

But all data is not created equal, and marketers need to do their homework before aligning themselves with one company over another.

Read more: Reporters Erik Oster and Shoshana Wodinsky break down the ad-tech offerings of all five major holding companies.

Avi Dan, founder and CEO of search consultancy Avidan Strategies, estimates that AOR relationships still compose 70%–80% of agencies’ revenues but thinks that number has been in decline for the past three to four years and is closer to 50% for small and midsize shops.

Read more: Those decreasing AOR relationships have left agencies scrambling. Here’s how Erich & Kallman, MediaMonks and Falkon have all adjusted in their own ways to remain successful.

The 4A’s and Digital Content Next are devising a standardized means of analyzing sentiment on recognized news websites to provide advertisers with more sophisticated brand safety standards, stopping their ads from being served next to hot-button political content.

Read more: Programmatic editor Ronan Shields explains what the 4A’s and DCN are doing.

Just Briefly: The Rest of Today’s Top News and Insights

Most things look cuter when they’re in miniature, but does that still apply to something like thousands of cars stuck in gridlock?

A new ad campaign for Swedish public transit service Västtrafik turns toy cars into an imposing illustration of the 30,000 vehicles that could be removed from the road through a current promotion offering drivers in the region free bus transport for two weeks.

Uber Eats’ global head of marketing, Nikki Neuburger, heads to Brandweek to discuss engaging consumers and delivering food movements that enrich lives and help communities to prosper. Join the Movement before tickets sell out.

Listen: On this week’s episode of Yeah, That’s Probably an Ad, we’re joined by Marina Filippelli, COO, director of client services at Orcí, and Isaac Mizrahi, COO of Alma, to discuss where marketers are getting it right—and wrong—when marketing to their Latino consumers. Retail reporter Ann-Marie Alcántara also joined for the discussion.

Workplace Tip: Use Empathy To Problem-Solve

By Tony Rogers, CMO, Sam's Club: Almost everything we work on is connected cross-functionally to multiple parts of the operation. There’s the need for somebody to be agile and have the ability to at least be conversant across different functions. Because if you come up only through one silo and you only know that silo, it becomes really difficult to apply your skillset to solve the company initiative. We know we need to get even tighter in connecting sales information to customer service information, and you need people who can have some empathy and sympathy for each other's jobs to solve these problems.

Radical innovation requires radical changes in our behavior.

Agency Brokaw keeps things lively for Lake View.

The music-streaming service shared an exclusive playlist and some data.

The film was released 15 years ago, and a Broadway musical comedy is currently playing.