🗓️ Last Weeks Earnings

• (4/29) Snap Earnings: Sales in Snap’s first quarter jumped 14% to $1.36 billion from $1.19 billion in the year-ago period. This looks good but with ad dollars moving from TikTok this is a sign that Meta and YouTube are likely capturing the lion share of dollars moving. Will be an interesting year for Snap but still solid.

• (5/1) Reddit CRUSHES Earnings: Reddit CRUSHED Q1 earnings and stated that second-quarter sales should come in the range of $410 million to $430 million, ahead of Wall Street projections of $396 million. This is a great display of strength despite the scare in January on Google docking Reddit’s visibility. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini seem to be still tools versus the human to human connection and interactions on Reddit seem to be growing by the day.

• (5/1) Amazon Issues Light Guidance: Delivered $13.92 billion vs. $13.74 billion expected in advertising revenue. However AWS was flat and revenue guidance for retail was mixed given tariffs and slowing growth. Given Amazon’s market penetration consumers are definitely easing spending in a “wait and see” mentality to delay purchases unless they’re necessary. This year will be bumpy but keep an eye on Amazon and Walmart for the state of the US Consumer as that will be the start before impacting agency media spend.

🚀 Top Advertising Industry News Of The Week

Top M&A News You Should Know About

• Publicis Group acquires Adopt: Adopt is a sports marketing agency founded by Rich Paul (LeBron James BFF). This was interesting following their acquisition of Lotame they were doubling down on data and unique IDs on the web for advertising. But, just when you think Publicis can’t get any bigger they do this.

• Los Angeles Times Lost $50 Million In 2024: Sad to see newspapers struggling, we need free press and terrifying seeing this while social media platforms and streaming services skyrocket (Hi Netflix). Digital is the future so expect to see a lot of M&A and consolidation in the news industry in the coming years.

• Madwell Agency Furloughs and Gets Sued: Madwell lost the Verizon account, then the CEO went into a long interview blaming his old partners. There are 3 sides to every story, but where there is smoke there is fire. At the end of the day the buck stops with the CEO and right now that’s Chris who has to answer these questions but respect him going to AdAge for an interview. That takes balls. Unfortunately the agency shut down on April 30th (See more below).

Nobody Knows What’s Going On With Tariffs In Advertising

Check out the different headlines below from the same day on AdAge. They all say different things; Hiring is slowing, media spend is solid at WPP (Massive agency) or marketing budgets are dropping.

All of these conflict which illustrates that like us regular people, companies are in limbo. Time will tell but still too early to call. Trade Desk stock and big walled gardens will be the first tell tale sign things budgets are getting slashed but so far so good (See above earnings bullets).

🦄 The Martin Agency Viral Post:

This was so popular because it called out the agency for holding their senior leaders accountable. Look if you’re making a ton in the c-suite with options, profit sharing etc. and the company isn’t doing well you own it. Don’t feel bad for them one bit. Hope more employees feel empowered to post about this and think Gen Z will change this for the better to be honest.

The image is linked below if you want to check out the additional posts about it:

🔥 In Case You Missed It…

BEST CLIENT EVER: This post on 4/26 warmed my heart. I guess not all clients are terrible? This response proves we’re all still humans trying to get feedback by EOD.

😢 Story of The Week: Madwell Agency Closes After 17 Years

Share This Newsletter With Your Coworkers: