Ad Age Insider

Twenty-one percent of the population now owns at least one smart speaker. A full 14 million people in the U.S. got their first smart speaker device in 2018 — meaning voice as a topic of fascination is not going away any time soon. From the floor of the Las Vegas Convention center this week, NPR CMO Meg Goldthwaite joins us to discuss the revolution in voice, and what it means for marketers and consumers alike.

Launched in January, Verb is a hybrid shop that claims to have a new approach to the agency space. Verb boasts both traditional agency chops and consultancy offerings for both brands and other agencies — with a specialty in experiential marketing. It is the brain child of Shannon Simpson Jones and Yadira Harrison, both former VPs of the Civic Entertainment Group. We discuss the challenges and opportunities in the experiential, and the gap between brand expectations and reality. Both executives who happen to be women of color, they also weigh in on diversity and inclusivity and why it's important to take a step back to look at who is in the room with you.

The Seattle-based creative shop Wongdoody (yes, that's its real name) celebrated its 25th anniversary this year — and as it did so, it was acquired by Indian tech giant Infosys, once known for offshoring jobs. It is, says CEO Ben Wiener, a great time for an agency like Wongdoody. As the big advertising holding companies continue to fumble, Wongdoody is seeing double digit growth, he says. It is winning new business and expanding globally. A Wongdoody lifer, Wiener started at the company as an intern in 1994. Now he runs the show from his perch in Los Angles. We discuss industry trends at large as the year winds to a close and what's next for in 2019.

Days after Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne closed on their purchase of Time, the new owners gave its editor, Edward Felsenthal, the additional title of CEO. Felsenthal joins Ad Lib to discuss his role in the negotiation process with the Benioffs – and where he plans to take things under the new ownership. Time is on something of a roll: it won an Emmy in 2017, a National Magazine Award in 2018 and will see nearly 2 billion video streams this year. And, despite declining print revenues, Time remains the largest U.S. print title in news, with 2 million subscribers.

In 2015, when Julio Bruno took over as the chief executive at Time Out, it was taking on heavy losses. An executive who had held senior positions at Diageo and TripAdvisor, Bruno saw an opportunity. Now, three years on, as Time Out celebrates its 50th anniversary, Bruno has not only begun to turn the publisher around and make it digitally relevant, but he's taken it public, leaned into an ecommerce strategy and is building a chain of physical market places.

After 14 years at Anomaly, founding partner Karina Wilsher will be assuming the global CEO title at the agency. Currently the global COO, Wilsher has long been groomed for the new role and will assume the chief executive position in January. True to its name, Anomaly is an outlier in its space, a non-traditional agency that was founded with a commitment to intellectual property and creating products. Wilsher joins me today to discuss the news and what it means for her and for Anomaly. We discuss its most famous product, the legal cannabis pen Dosist, the breaking down of the holding company model, Brexit — which the London-based Wilsher describes as a "shit show." We get into the struggles of Anomaly's parent company MDC Partners, evolving consumer behaviors and what 2019 looks like for Anomaly.

The co-founder of 14-year-old agency Walton Isaacson first went to work for the brand side in 1983 — Pepsi specifically. As it happens Pepsi at the time was working with a singer by the name of Michael Jackson. Walton's job would take him on tour with Jackson. Now, some 35 years after that first incredible gig, Walton is not only still in the business of telling brand stories, he's still at culture's cutting edge. It was Walton Isaacson client Lexus that teamed up with Marvel for the Black Panther ads that ran during this year's Super Bowl. More recently the agency added the New York Police Department to its roster, where the mandate is to help the department integrate its ranks.

In September, satellite radio company Sirius XM offered to plunk down $3.5 billion to acquire streaming music service Pandora. Joining us today is Pandora svp of ad innovation Lizzie Widhelm to break down what the Sirius offer means to Pandora — and vice versa. Sirius has more than 36 million subscribers in North America, Pandora has 70 million monthly listeners — fewer than 6 million of whom pay for the service. We discuss the state of advertising in the streaming space, the future of audio and why she's bullish on podcasts. We also discuss why she thinks she didn't experience noticeable gender discrimination until she reached senior leadership positions. Oh, and we get into what her favorite TV show was growing up.

This weekend some 60,000 sneakerheads, hip hop aficionados, jocks, gamers, design nerds and foodies will descend on Long Beach, California, for the fourth annual ComplexCon. The consumer-facing pop culture bonanza is the physical expression of media brand Complex, which CEO Rich Antoniello has been driving for the past 17 years. Rich — who is outspoken on just about any topic you can throw at him — joins us today for a wide-ranging conversation covering everything from media's pivot to revenue diversification (after it's failed pivot to video) and how Complex's joint acquisition by Hearst and Verizon in 2016 has been playing out for the brand. We talk about why he's bullish on over-the-top streaming platforms and how his own background as an agency and print guy left him perfectly unprepared to be a modern media CEO.

An Aussie giant of a former Rugby player, Troy Ruhanen joined TBWA as president and CEO four years ago. Today he joins us on the Ad Lib podcast to spill some tea on his competitors — including WPP and Publicis — and give us some insight into clients including Apple, McDonald's and Nissan. We discuss what their pain points are, what his agency's big wins over the last four years have been, and growing up blue collar in Brisbane.