Ad Age Insider

On the first day of her job as CEO, Kiran Smith broke her left foot. What could easily be interpreted as a bad omen turned out to be a blessing in a cast: Smith says the boot she's had to wear these past five weeks have endeared her to new staffers and broken the ice with clients. She could use all the help she can get: In its second quarter earnings release last month, parent company Vivendi blamed weak organic results of its agency network Havas on "the impact of Arnold's underperformance." A veteran marketer — her most recent gig was as CMO at Brookstone — with no agency experience, Smith says she brings with her a fresh perspective to a gig that is sorely in need of one. She joins the podcast today to discuss the challenges she faces in her new job, what she brings to the table as a former marketer and what she's learning from clients like Progressive and Jack Daniels.

Publicis Groupe has had quite a year. In June of 2017 Maurice Levy stepped down as the holding company's CEO, handing the reins over to Arthur Sadoun. That same month, the company made waves at Cannes for saying it would abstain from sending work to awards shows for a full year in order to devote resources to an internal tech platform called Marcel. Still, Publicis missed its revenue targets in second-quarter earnings reported last month -- despite winning some major accounts in the first half 2018. Serrano joins the podcast to discuss what distinguishes the Publicis strategy at a time when holding companies are under pressure from clients to cut costs and under siege from consultancies and tech giants Google, Facebook and Amazon. Plus we talk about her childhood as the family's black sheep — and she tells us about the time she gave advertising legend Lee Clow some really bad advice.

For a publication with "news" in its title US News doesn't focus much on what's happening in the papers these days. Formerly known as US News and World Report, the publisher is perhaps best known to the average reader for its annual college rankings. But it is actually something of a digital pioneer. The media brand ditched its print magazine in 2010 to go all digital and shifted its focus to pure service. While its core business is still advertising-based it does a monster business in lead generation, or, as CEO Bill Holiber calls it, performance marketing. Something seems to be working: The brand sees roughly 40 million monthly visitors, about 10 million going to each of its four core subject areas: education, health, government and money.

The Fox Business anchor joined the "Ad Lib" podcast before her news-making interview with President Trump last week. Here, Bartiromo discusses her evolution from a CNBC pioneer—where she was the first reporter to broadcast from the stock exchange floor—to a somewhat more ideological Fox Business headliner. We discuss her "Money Honey" nickname and industry sexism, the future of cable news and the demographics of her audience.

With 22 years heading up an independent agency under his belt, DiMassimo Goldstein's Mark DiMassimo believes traditional advertising's days are numbered. Of course, he would say that. A long-ago JWT creative who logged years at holding companies, DiMassimo says he saw the light when he realized agencies fundamentally failed to meet clients needs. Proud to never have been to Cannes over the span of his entire career, DiMassimo discusses using advertising to fight the opioid epidemic and why, for the first time in his life, he finds himself agreeing with Martin Sorrell.

At a time when ad tech is besieged by brand safety concerns, transparency issues and industry-wide consolidation, the Trade Desk has been having a solid run. The demand side programmatic ad buying platform — have we lost you yet? — generated $85.7 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2018, a 61 percent jump from the same period last year. Today we are joined by Brian Stempeck, chief client officer for the Trade Desk and rhythm guitarist for the company band, whose job is, in part, to translate the bewildering jargon of the industry and parse the challenges and opportunities around things like cross-device targeting and leveraging data, specifically as it pertains to addressable TV. We get into all that, plus what it's like going toe-to-toe with Google, what GDPR means for the future of ad tech consolidation, and what this week's AT&T acquisition of AppNexus means for the industry.

Michael Wolff has some thoughts about conflict. A consummate media insider for decades, the journalist-provocateur-entrepreneur shot into the public consciousness in January with the publication of his sensational peek inside the Donald Trump White House, "Fire and Fury." He, along with the rest of the advertising and media ecosystem, is in Cannes for the International Festival of Creativity. In a panel with adman Jeff Goodby, Wolff riffed on Trump's psyche. On this episode of Ad Lib, recorded earlier this week on the Croisette, Wolff opened up about the success of the book, the nature of fame – and our collective fascination with conflict, understanding Trump, the role of the journalist and more.

You may not have heard of David Shing, but you probably know about Shingy. The self-styled "digital prophet" at Oath – the Verizon-owned juggernaut that comprises AOL, Yahoo, the Huffington Post and some 50 media and b-to-b brands – is in Cannes on a mission that seems counterintuitive to what a digital prophet ought to be all about. He wants people to dial down their anxiety-inducing reliance on their phones. On this pop-up Cannes-themed edition of the Ad Lib podcast, we caught up with Shingy, who was en route to his keynote address. Here, we discuss tech dependence, Oath, 5G, living a bit more mindfully – and what exactly it is that he does.

In a challenging time with so much gloom and doom out there, Paul Marobella remains a consummate optimist. The North American Chairman and CEO of Havas creative says the current climate reminds him of the mid-1990s, "when digital was going to change everything." Marobella joins the Ad Lib podcast today to discuss the advantages of being owned by Vivendi as opposed to a traditional advertising holding company, creating a culture of creativity and what he's looking forward to in Cannes.

An expansive marketer in an era of the incredible shrinking CMO, Rajamannar joins the Ad Lib podcast to discuss what he calls the CMO existential crisis. We talk about marketing at scale in a time when people hate ads and have the power to block them, the surprising durability of the 20-year-old "Priceless" campaign and increasing gender diversity at his company's ranks. We also talk about a recent Mastercard campaign that received a bit of social media backlash for promising to donate meals to starving children every time footballers Lionel Messi and Neymar Jr score a goal during the World Cup – an ad that the company ended up pulling.